DRIFT 

TH E RO^NCE 
OF AN OCTOPUS 


M i ; » 5 n * ^ n ' * > • 1 1 r ! n T u i i n u .M n in j r; w j I » •. M 1 1 n I : f n n • 1 1 • ; i 




IH! ii ia 














'i.. . 


i* . 


\ 




*<» • ’ . ' 









i<>- 


V 






>• . ■ 

t 1 , - . • 



I 


•m 


vrw: 


TT?-/’ 

. 


> > 









4 




1*^ 










Sk.'£' ■■ 


W” 


■ . 

V'V 


:'n ■" 

>Jv/ ■' 




• % 


t 

t 

k 

r, 


' / 


't>7 



4ji 


« 


r: 


' 4 




.'J 


“S 

I 



s 


t 


,i^f. k: 



- '• V 


9 


6 







V 








> 


•* I 





> '» 






1.^ 



■ > ; 



. r. ^ 

K 

-> 




/ 


i.r< 


f 


t.< 






r ■ 


r 4 


V 





lioporter Lodiix' is (liscluii‘j»t'(l to placate the Chicaj»o 
inerchaiit prince who has threatened to withdraw his 
linn's advertisinji patronajie from this “great daily 
newspaper.-’ — Page 97. 



i 


DRIFTING 


OR 

The Romance of an Octopus 


A Novel of Love, Politics and 
Newspaper Life under the 
rule of the Commercial Trusts 


BY 

SUB ROSA 

\v 


“Too long has the money of the [large] advertiser suppressed the voice of the 
press. The fear of losing the advertisers’ [rich] contracts is a sword of Damocles in 
newspaper offices— a sword suspended above the heads of editors, terrorizing them, one 
and all, into tame subserviency. And this sword of the advertiser is forged from 
Pluto’s gbld — the gold that is smeared with the blood and tears of the countless 
victims of pauper wages .” — Speech of John Lodge, page 203. 


Price, $1.50 


> V •• J • > 

» > > ) 

> > D > > ^ 

t » > ) 

V ■» > > ) > 


' 1 . , , ’ »’ 

> >>>o »>' 



) 9 

) > 


y > y 
■> 

y t 
} 







0 ' j 

1 

> > • 
* . > 


y 5 ) 

> 

> ft 
» 

^ > » 







LIBRARY nf CO?k»GRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

JUN 15 1904 

CODVrteht Entry 

r. 2 ^, /Q(PV- 

Ci-ASS (p/ XXo. No. 


COPY B 


i. 0 . NO. ; 

Li 




COPYRIGHT, 1904 

BY 

THE ELYSIAN FIELDS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

CHICAGO 


All Rights Rbsbrvbd 


.« « 


> • 4 


» • • 
• • 

« « « • 




• - • 


PUBLISHERS^ PREFACE. 


Nothing like this book has been published since his- 
tory began. In plot and treatment it is absolutely 
unique. 

It is the first novel to deal with the industrial trusts. 
It has trust conditions for its setting; the daily life 
under the trust regime for its nriotif. 

A powerful and exciting novel of commercialism 
and politics, it is at the same time a true and beautiful 
and most romantic love story. 

It deals in a measure with the most fascinating 
phase of the modern newspaper life — that borderland 
where journalism and business meet and cross swords, 
where the literary and artistic instinct in a writer re- 
volts at the rule of commerce and mere money over 
the vital questions of the journalist’s duty to the pub- 
lic and the nation. 

Interesting episodes which are daily occurrences in 
newspaper offices, but are deep, dark mysteries to the 
public at large — and even in the editorial sanctum are 
spoken of only with bated breath — these mysteries, at 
once fascinating and sinister, will in this book be 
found disclosed in all their portentous significance. 
After reading this volume nobody any longer will be 
so mystified as to feel prompted to inquire ‘‘Why 
anything under the sun — any power or influence, how- 
ever great or terrible — should be spoken of with fear 


PREFACE. 


• • • 

Vlll 

and trembling by the magnates and sub-magnates in 
control of the ‘great daily papers’ of this enlightened 
generation ?” 

In this book the basic principles of American de- 
mocracy are contrasted with socialism as well as 
with the despotism of commercial trusts, and it can- 
not be said that the New World system of popular 
self-government suffers in any way by the contrast. 

John Lodge, the superb and amazing hero of the 
story, proves to be a real and terrible scourge to the 
oppressive trusts. He makes a herculean and win- 
ning fight against the wrongs and abominations in- 
flicted on the long-suffering public by the particular 
trust that he deems the worst octupus of the time. 
All through the exciting period of his struggles and 
trials he holds tenaciously to the creed of the optimist. 
He makes up his mind that he is right; then he goes 
ahead, even to the pathetic and beautiful climax that 
ends the story. The revelations made in the course 
of his labors and triumphs are astounding and appall- 
ing. 

Shopgirls, salesmen — and most of the other classes 
of wage-earners — students, politicians, sociologists, 
preachers, patriots, will find more to interest them in 
this book than in any work published in the last twenty 
years. It is a problem story in most alluring set- 
ting — the combination of the real and the ideal that 
represents, or should represent, the acme of attain- 
ment in the modern novel — the novel that eschews 
the false lights of “the spurious historicab’ and deals 


PREFACE. 


IX 


courageously but sympathetically with the stubborn 
facts of life under the complex civilization of the 
Twentieth Century. In this broad sense the book 
conveys in its own captivating way a great lesson. 
And it is a lesson that not only is a revelation but 
at the same is conclusive and convincing. 

This is the first novel in ..which the fundamental 
principles of labor unions are fairly stated. It holds 
out the lamp of hope to all wage-earners, indicating 
clearly how they may accomplish their redemption. 
It is not a universal panacea for industrial and politi- 
cal ills. But it suggests certain remedial measures 
which are practical, not visionary, and which, so far 
as the publishers are aware, have never before been 
urged as the fair and adequate plans for dealing with 
the twin evils of commercial concentration and low 
wages — the public oppressions behind which are en- 
trenched the industrial monopolies that quite impu- 
dently have named themselves “the business interests 
of the nation,” to the exclusion of the smaller busi- 
ness houses whose success is the only true test of the 
country’s prosperity. 

In addition to its charm of love and mystery, thrill- 
ing incident and dramatic situation, the book has a 
remarkable description of the Iroquois fire — the recent 
theater horror having been made the setting for the 
great climax in the story’s last chapter; a description 
which, we make bold to say, is the best short descrip- 
tion of any fire scene ever depicted, not excepting any- 
thing in the entire wide range of history or fiction. 



. r • ' • * * 

* . -■ • 

- 1 

-. ^ » 

• 1’ 

1 

. / 



« 

^ M . 1 

1 . 

’ ■ y . 



* . I 



v J . 

1 

’ , « 

-•v.’l 

’ .-.fj •,■ ' _ 

\n ' 1 .• (! 1/ 

m 

. ■ . <- ... 

-j h.yi- L 

{, i, i; 

'J ' 

' . • .> V 

i;}'i r: .?i ;i ; . f 

-'■• •/'•'. ■ _< ■,“• r.';.f'* 

t ^ , 

i ou/. 


* ♦ 

" ^ V v . lyj’ 

. ' . 

• 

i 



« 

♦ . ' ' r ' 

l*> ■ 

: ? / ; ’ - J ■ ^ i • / * * ■ ^ *" ■, 


J ■ X * 

'' .*■ i 

H • ' UAa 

/ ?'t’ ' i, - • :•• 

j' 

> ? V. 


r \ ' . ' 

. *** - / . • . . . , 





• * 

> 

, ; ‘'i' If !. 1 ■ '.r 



.j j A‘tia^\ 


' ' "■ ' ■ '• >i;f v;> i, 

•y;'" ' 

'■'. ll 

hyi:, \ :• V ‘ '■ f 

It . _ •’ .;, V' 

r, .( 

V ?S7 

: ’ - r;r« ■ 

m 


r ‘j; 'Vi-^ 

v'f . 

«• -V •■ ■ M ■ 

>•■•'■••■ ••T*' 

. % 

N 

r • 


■■ }^i, i 1 ,. ‘>1 . 

"* 4 





: ■ •• 


1 * ♦ 

f; J j/ 

y * 

• ir.y 

♦ ,1 

41*1 ♦f* ' 

■ 1*- ^ ( ' ;.- 

* » 

It 

t * • * » 

r. . . ‘ ^ ■ 1^4 

/ ■ . 4 • . * 

•;:'i ■• 


-i 

✓ . • 4»U • • 

■ ^ I 

• '■:;■'*< ’ ■■ I 

> 

‘ *- 

f ■'•• 


r" * 

\ 

'■ • i 





, » 

- 

I * . 

. 




; / . . 

r-f 

- . ■ r?'' 

• 







# 

i ,- 

% 




0 

' 

9 

IT. >*- ‘ 

J#' 

-.I'l -‘ ' 


* ^V'\ ■ 


• 

1 *-» * 

' » 


• » * ‘ ‘ 

. • » * 



9 

■vr^ • ^ 



• t 

'.;■ i v-V; 

' . • ■ -i ^ 

-Ciu- .. 



N 


DRIFTING 

OR 

The Romance of an Octopus 


CHAPTER I. 

Blue Pigeon is a pretty little village in the flowering 
dells of Michigan. It is famous for its peaches and 
the beauty of its women. A great railroad stretching 
from New York to Chicago, across one-quarter of the 
American continent, bisects the place. In old settlers’ 
days the presence of the railroad led the inhabitants to 
believe that their squatters’ camp in the woodland 
clearing had an important destiny. But that was a 
delusion. The “great future” never came. It now 
seemed doubtful whether for Blue Pigeon was reserved 
any more important destiny than that of a mere way- 
station in one of the great commercial highways so 
aptly named the arteries of civilization. 

Here, as the rays of the rising sun are burnishing 
the tree-tops one morning in the Indian summer, a soli- 
tary figure may be seen crouching in a corner of a 
great rustic seat, built high and deep and strong into 
an angle of the platform at the railroad station. A 
closer examination shows the figure to be that of a girl 
asleep. Beside her on the seat of birch boughs are a 
few bundles, the wrappers of which are ancient, dis- 
colored newspapers. As she slumbers the girl’s face 
is upturned towards the sun. Her left cheek is rest- 


12 


DRIFTING. 


ing in her bare brown bands, which are clasped in fin^ 
ger knots, intertwining five and five. Her sleep is 
peaceful. 

It would be safe to venture a guess that the girl is 
waiting for a train. Her dress and shoes can be seen 
only imperfectly in her recumbent position, but they 
display unmistakable signs of recent travel by foot, or 
otherwise, over the country roads. A bunch of stray 
locks, escaping beneath the lilac colored Tam-O-Shan- 
ter on her head, shows that her hair is dark brown, 
verging • on the auburn, with a velvety gloss of 
unusual lustre. It is disheveled somewhat. Quite a 
few of the long, wavy tresses are swaying gently to 
and fro, caressed by the soft breath of October zeph- 
yrs. Her feet, which are small and well-formed, are 
encased in shoes that are of good quality, but by no 
means new. It would be sheer truth to say that the 
girl’s clothes were somewhat the worse for wear. In 
the vamp of the left shoe what appears to be a hole 
could be detected without any very sharp glances ; and 
there within the aperture might be obtained a glimpse 
of a rosy toe that had made its way alike through the 
incasements of hose and leather. Songs of birds and 
the humming whir of electricity on the telegraph wires 
now filled the air, but failed to disturb the sleeping 
maiden. Footsteps sounded in the distance; then drew 
nearer. 

A young man of fine appearance and serious mien 
entered through the open gateway in the fence beside 
the platform. He passed within twenty feet of the 
sleeper ; but he saw her not. He walked briskly to the 


DRIFTING. • 


13 


door of the waiting room. His hand, which was deli- 
cate and finely proportioned, sought the door knob, but 
his quest was vain. Entrance was barred; the door 
was locked. He peered through the windows, then 
listened and stood to see if any person was about. No 
sign or sound denoting the presence of anybody was 
detected by him. 

'"Rather silly of me to have hurried at such a pace 
over the soggy roads hereabout,” he muttered. "I 
might have known that it was not yet 6 130 ; the posi- 
tion of the sun on the horizon might have told me; 
but, all the same, it was, perhaps, best to make sure 
not to miss this train for Chicago.” 

M^th his back towards the sleeping girl he stood 
watching in the distance for some sign of the fast train 
due to arrive at this hour from the East. His hand 
sought his watch chain, but he remembered that his 
timepiece had stopped the previous night for lack of 
winding and that in setting it going again he had sim- 
ply guessed at the hour. He now fancied he heard 
the whistle of the train and that he saw a thin column 
of gray-black smoke arising above the tall woods at 
a bend in the roadway. A light touch upon his arm 
roused him from his watchful reverie. 

"If the young lady is with you and you have not 
your tickets you would do well to bestir yourself, sir, 
as this train stops only twenty seconds,” said the sta- 
tion agent, who arrived unseen and had taken in every- 
thing at a glance. 

"What young lady ?” responded the traveler, quietly. 
"Ah, T see,” he added quickly, as his eyes followed 


14 


DRIFTINCx. 


the railroad agent's kindly but quizzical glance in the 
direction of the sleeping girl. “No, I regret — that is, 
I really have not the pleasure of her acquaintance/’ 

In tones scarcely above a whisper had the two men 
spoken, but the sleeper had been disturbed. She turned 
fully around, but with eyes still closed, and now was 
facing the two men. 

They saw that she was beautiful as a flower unfold- 
ing. Her rosebud mouth was curved into the finest 
form of the cupid bow. Her eyelashes were long and 
silken ; her eyebrows finely arched ; her complexion 
like the peach bloom of Michigan orchard glades. 

Admiration seized the beholders. Silence possessed 
them. Side by side they stood as if petrified, respect- 
fully awaiting the opening of the fair one’s eyes. A 
shrill whistle in the distance — and the windows of a 
soul unsophisticated were opened wide. They disclosed 
round, full, kindly and innocent eyes, in hue like the 
azure of the heavens and equally as dreamy. 

With little shrieks more musical than chiming sil- 
very bells, the awakened one turned and hid her 
blushes in her bundles and her hands. But her per- 
turbation was not for long. She heard and recog- 
nized the noise of the incoming train, and without 
again looking at either of the men she gathered up 
her bundles and the dew-soaked mantle that had 
served as a sheltering blanket for her graceful, lithe 
and willowy form as she slept. 

“All aboard for Chicago,” a trainman cried. 

Tickets were now being punched and put in readi- 
ness at the office window by the agent, and the two 


DRIFTING. 15 

prospective passengers were waiting outside the lat- 
tice, purchase-money in hand. 

From the furtive smiles of a belated porter it now 
became evident that there is at least one person who 
takes the twain to be sweethearts, eloping to avoid the 
anger of objecting parents. But he failed to notice 
that the young man stood somewhat aloof from the 
girl. She paid her fare and signed her name for the 
ticket. It was a ticket to Chicago, and the name up- 
on it was “Algona Norwell.’’ " 

As she yielded her place at the window to the other 
ticket purchaser he signed in a bold, rectangular hand 
this name : ‘‘John Lodge.” 

To the clanging accompaniment of a heavy bell on 
the snorting engine the cry “All aboard” rang out again 
from the trainman’s raucous throat, only more insis- 
tent this time than before. With a swift but graceful 
sweep Miss Norwell reached the side of the day 
coach. She approached the steps. John Lodge was in 
advance and about to enter, but he yielded pre- 
cedence to her and respectfully stepped aside. While 
in the attitude of waiting his demeanor was so bashful 
that his eyes instinctively sought the ground. There for 
a moment they were riveted. What his glance beheld 
could not have been a very shocking spectacle, but 
it caused a rush of blood to the young man’s head and 
brought a look of confusion and trouble into his face. 
His embarrassment would have been a mystery if 
this country girl had not been wearing a broken shoe. 


I6 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER II. 

When John Lodge got aboard the train his foot- 
steps led him, in a mechanical way, across the thresh- 
old of the car which Miss Norwell had entered. He 
saw her select a seat, but before she could occupy it 
she would have to face around toward him, as both 
had entered the car at the front end. Just as she was 
turning John turned, too. He walked from the place 
and entered the smoking car, which was immediately 
in front. It was an instinctive move for avoidance of 
the girFs glance, but he recalled long afterward how 
he felt at the time that his ruse, so impulsively adopted, 
had failed completely and that she then and there be- 
came aware of his interest in her and, with her 
woman’s intuition, had understood his retrograde 
movement to have its inspiration in the wish to avoid 
her presence. It was a case of the moth and the flame 
— with the moth possessing human intelligence and 
judgment, and therefore avoiding the flame. 

In the smoking car, as he passed through, John 
Lodge saw a man whose face he deemed familiar. It 
did not take him long to satisfy himself that he was 
not mistaken. Mutual recognition and greeting 
quickly ensued, and the man to whom John had bowed, 
left his own seat and came forward with a pleasant 
smile and outstretched hand. 


DRIFTING. 17 

“Are you still engaged in newspaper work?” he 
asked. 

“I\ot just now,” replied John. “I have been away 
from CJiicago for months, certain business matters 
having called me into the country.” 

“Perhaps you don’t remember just where we met?” 
said the other. 

“Oh, yes, I remember you perfectly well, doctor,” 
said John, very quietly. 

“But, it may be that you remember my profession 
and still not know my name. Or you may have for- 
gotten it.” 

John laughed aloud as he answered: 

“Well, doctor, you’re quite right: I will say frankly 
that your name is known to me ; but it is floating in 
the sea of memory and I cannot harpoon it at this 
moment.” 

“It’s Barrett ; Wilson Hugh Barrett, Columbus 
Memorial Building,” said the physician, smiling 
suavily. 

“Just so; that’s it, sure enough,” said John. “But 
what mind readers, you doctors are? I sometimes 
think that the science of medicine is advancing to a 
point where no secrets can be kept hidden from the 
eyes of the capable physicians.” 

“We are all capable, all very capable, Mr. — Mr. 
Lodge. That’s your name, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, John Lodge is my name.” 

“I thought so. And now, my dear young man, let 
me tell you, that while it may be true enough that the 


i8 


DRIFTING. 


capable doctor is able to read other people’s minds he 
cannot always read his own with neatness and dis- 
patch. You don’t suspect, I see, that it was almost as 
hard for me to read your name in my mind as it was 
for you to read mine in yours, and that in this parley, 
about your knowledge of my name, I have been fenc- 
ing to gain time in which to read my own mind.” 

“But, you see, doctor, wherein you had the advan- 
tage,” said John. “It is now quite certain that my 
name was in your mind to be read, whereas there is no 
certainty whatever that I could have read your name 
in my mind, if in my mind it really was.” 

“Ah, you are now treading on the argumentative 
hair line that divides the false and true, the existent 
from the non-existent.” 

“Then the non-existent is false?” 

“Yes, the falsest thing in the world; as false as a 
coquette’s smiles.” 

A delicate tinge of heightening color, the heraldry 
of a blush, now stole into John’s face. It did not 
escape the notice of the doctor, whose glances were 
sympathetic, but betrayed that he was puzzled. Per- 
haps the young man was unaccustomed to discussions 
dealing with the tender passion. A decade or so be- 
fore it would not have been altogether impossible to 
find a youth who would blush to the ears at the men- 
tion of the word “love.” But in this present year of 
grace, when every schoolgirl valedictorian or bacca- 
laureate, handles the tender passion without gloves 
and coldly turns over a sentiment on the dissecting 
slab of analytical essayism, it is indeed a rare phe- 


DRIFTING. 


19 


nonienon to find in real life a bashful youth or boy. 
Still it is clear to the doctor that John Lodge is bash- 
ful. In appearance and bearing he is a manly youth, 
with a splendid physique and a face that is both strong 
and handsome. In fact, it was rightly said of John, 
as a school and college student, that he never really 
knew how good-looking he was. Nor would it be 
safe to say that he yet knew it, or to prophesy that he 
ever would know. 

It was now that most glorious hour of morning 
when the cloudless autumn sunshine floods the Eastern 
horizon with its golden glow. John was enraptured 
with the kaleidoscopic panorama of wooded scenery 
that he beheld from the window of the speeding train. 
For the moment he surrendered his soul to sublime ad- 
miration of beauteous nature, clad in the rainment and 
variegated foliage of a gorgeous Indian summer. With 
its mad rush of glorious colors, showing the purple 
and aureole and crimson and emerald hues of the 
rainbow, the fleeting landscape had allurements for his 
soul and senses. He hungered for closer communing 
with the birds and the trees and the sylvan streams. 

With trembling hands he threw up the window at 
his elbow and his face was aglow with the joy of his 
young life. His finely shaped nostrils dilated and 
gently throbbed with the first breath of the morn- 
ing air. 

‘Well, well, doctor, what are you doing out here 
at this unholy hour of the morning, so far away from 
your happy hunting ground in the medical pastures 
of Chicago?” said a voice that drew Dr. Barrett’s 


20 


DRIFTING. 


attention from a morning newspaper in which he had 
been absorbed. 

‘‘Glad to see you, Mr. Warren; how do you do?” 
said the doctor, shaking hands in a most cordial way 
with' a sharp-featured, keen-eyed man in the seat 
immediately behind his own. 

“"‘I saw you from the first but noticed you were 
interested in other things and I would not interrupt 
you too hastily,” said Warren. 

“But I did not see you, my word of honor for that.” 

“Even if you had seen me, it would still have been 
all right to have ignored a poor devil of a labor 
agitator.” 

“Why, Warren, old man, are you still distrustful 
and cynical, even toward your friends?” 

“Toward everybody, doc, except the horny-handed 
son of toil.” 

As he spoke the representative of labor kept his 
gaze quite steadily fixed upon the face of John Lodge 
and never looked at all at the doctor. To John it was 
a strange gaze, at once whimsical and quizzical, sym- 
pathetic and pathetic. It was a look that he felt was 
searching his very soul. But it did not cause him to 
wince or squirm in the least. He welcomed rather 
than avoided it. Instead of frightening, it fascinated. 
He was conscious that he had become an object of 
interest to a man who, whatever his faults or short- 
comings, had a look of triumph and of power; of 
severity untempered with mercy — except perhaps for 
the weak and poor in his own walk of life. 

When the representative of labor first made his 


DRIFTING. 


21 


presence known, the doctor was sitting face to face 
with John Lodge. He now left his seat and took a 
position vis-a-vis with Warren. In a moment the 
twain were engaged in a confidential chat, carried on 
in accents hushed almost to a whisper. John began to 
feel that his presence might be intrusive. With an 
apologetic bow to the physician he arose and went 
out into the morning. 


22 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER III. 

On the platform he halted. Almost instantly he 
felt he was between the fires of two pairs of eyes. For 
some reason, unaccountable at the time, the mere pos- 
sibility of again meeting Miss Norwell face to face 
was a thought that fascinated him, but at the same 
time made him feel quite uneasy. He knew that her 
eyes were upon him just then. From his position he 
had a full view of the interior of the coach in front 
of him. He had caught a. glimpse of the purple Tam- 
O-Shanter and without permitting himself to meet 
the girl’s glance, he became aware that he was an 
object of interest to her at that moment. 

From the interior of the car which he had just left, 
and to which his back was now turned, the eyes of 
Mr. Warren were, he was satisfied, watching him as 
closely as ever. It was a novel experience for him to 
find himself the object of so much curious study, and 
he was a trifle embarrassed and nervous in the ordeal. 

With an effort he directed his attention to the man- 
ifold beauties of scenery in the country through which 
the train was now whirling at great speed. 

Standing there on the platform he inhaled through 
the open window slides a most refreshing draught of 
air. He admired the Raphaelean purple and ihe 
blending emerald and scarlet tints of tree-tops and of 


DRIFTING. 


23 


fields. Occasionally a tuneful bird was twittering 
among the underbrush. Or perchance a farmer’s dog 
would get his sprinting spirits aroused and make a 
dash along the borders of the cornfields in a vain at- 
tempt to outrun the train. Or a blue-jay, essaying 
ambitious melodies, would be seen perched upon the 
radiant sumac braes whose crimson and garnet leaves 
incarnadined the tree-trunks in the background with 
a mirage of rare, rich coloring. 

John’s cheeks were as the sumac leaves when he 
ventured another glance into the car ahead of him. 
His eyes now met those of Miss Norwell, and through 
the somewhat dim glass-panel of the door he saw, or 
fancied he saw, that she had been weeping. Her tears 
had' ceased to flow, but her handkerchief was still held 
in hand, as if she feared that there was danger of a 
fresh outburst. Her face now was pale, but she had a 
look of firmness and determination that made her re- 
markable beauty seem almost statuesque in its cold- 
ness and listlessness. Her glances had been furtive, but 
now she sat as rigid and upright as if she were inani- 
mate. All at once she made a little lurch forward in 
her seat. John Lodge was startled and instinctively 
his hand sought the door knob of the car in which she 
sat. He expected her to fall upon the seat or on the 
floor. Judge of his surprise when he realized that 
she merely had changed seats and turned her back 
upon him ! 

It was not a shock to his vanity, as in his mental 
makeup he had very little of that dangerous quality. 
His brief survey of the fair one’s charms had been 


24 


DRIFTING. 


very respectful. It would be called proper and harm- 
less by all save the ever-lessening number of maidens 
and swains who have been taught the ancient code 
that “every glance following the first one is a flirta- 
tion.’’ He knew that she could have had no just cause 
for offence at any look or act of his ; yet he was con- 
vinced that in turning her back on him she meant to 
snub him. Only that there were many other persons, 
several of them apparently observant men of the world, 
in her compartment, he probably would have stood his 
ground on the platform for some time longer. But he 
was possessed of a rarely refined and gentlemanly 
nature, and he withdrew in confusion from the scene. 

When John Lodge re-entered the smoking car he 
looked for and encountered instantly the gaze of Mr. 
Warren. It was as enigmatical as ever. The labor 
agitator was still engaged in the tete-a-tete with the 
physician. 

“Mr. Lodge, allow me to present to you Mr. Hiram 
B. Warren, of Chicago,” said the doctor. 

John saluted Mr. Warren in a friendly way. But 
Mr. Warren was cold and formal. He seemed studi- 
ously polite, yet there was about him an air of reserve 
that John soon found was grounded on the almost 
universal suspicion with which not Warren alone but 
members of nearly all labor unions had come to regard 
the socalled vampire agents of the “capitalistic” press. 

“Glad to meet a Chicago newspaper man; I know 
a great many of them,” said Mr. Warren. 

“Oh, I can hardly be called a newspaper man ; I 


DRIFTING. 


25 


have been only a few months in the business/’ an- 
swered John, in a deprecating way. 

“I always treat the boys of the press as well as I 
know how, but I make it a rule to warn them not to 
mix me up in any newspaper yarn, unless they first 
get my consent,” said Mr Warren. 

'Well, you need not have any fear in that way so 
far as I may be meant, for I am not attached to any 
paper at present,” said John. 

"You will be with the same vpaper though, won’t 
you?” said the doctor, with some concern. 

"Well, I cannot say as to that, but I am not worry- 
ing,” said John. 

Silence settled upon the little party. It was quite 
well known to the doctor how difficult it was to hold 
the pace in the strenuous newspaper work of the 
great cities, and he wondered whether this fine young 
man had been put outside the breastworks in a few 
brief months of the struggle. It seemed to him that 
he now remembered how this young man had been 
written up as a genuine hero for some noteworthy 
exploit performed in the work or hope of saving 
human lives ; and that at the time it had been told how 
full of pathos and anguish and humiliation had been 
his struggle as a raw youth in quest of newspaper 
work in the strange and soulless City of Chicago. 

"Were you not written up about a year ago in con- 
nection with that awful disaster at sea, the burning 
and wreck of the steamer Felicity?” asked the doctor, 
addressing John. 

“Why, yes, doctor. But I felt I was spoken of in 


26 


DRIFTING. 


far more laudatory terms than 1 deserved, or ever 
could deserve.” 

“Oh, I must dissent from that view ; my recollection 
is that you saved many lives and risked your own life 
a hundred times; that in bringing others to safety 
you were badly burned ; that at least one of the terrific 
explosions aboard the doomed craft threw you into 
the water, hundreds of feet away from the sinking 
ship; that you had sunk twice and were about to be 
engulfed for the last time, when that fair and rich 
young lady of the New York Woman’s Athletic Club 
swam to your side and was acclaimed as a heroine 
saving a hero from certain death in a watery grave — ” 

But before the doctor could complete his glowing 
tribute, as he recalled it from the reports published at 
the time, John had arisen quietly and was walking 
down the aisle of the car, with his back to the two 
Interested men whom he had just left. 

“What a remarkable young man he Is, Warren,” 
continued the doctor enthusiastically. “Upon my 
word, Warren, he is more modest than a maiden. 
What a manly, noble fellow ! Almost too magnificent, 
too unselfish, too generous. He has talent too, — aye, 
very great talent as a writer. I well remember his 
graphic newspaper account of that awful shipwreck, in 
which he modestly refrained from glorifying himself, 
his dangers — voluntarily met and overcome — or his 
heroic struggles as a life-saver, while giving unstinted 
praise to others, whose feats, the eye witnesses said, 
were dwarfed utterly by his own. Mark my word for 


DRIFTING. 


27 


it, Warren, he will be heard of in our country’s history. 
Public sentiment has wearied of the tin gods of mili- 
tarism, who, with their own horns have blown them- 
selves into high places. It is to the unselfish youth 
who will risk his life a hundred times for his fellow 
beings, that the future generations will have to look, 
if the nation is to remain a democracy and escape the 
curse of dynastic militarism based on the oligarchy of 
wealth.” 

“Are you not looking too far khead?” said Warren. 
“No doubt this youth is a fine, handsome fellow — the 
great, big, generous, manly sort that romantic girls want 
for their swains these days. But what can he or one hun- 
dred thousand like him accomplish against the oppres- 
sive power of the wealth concentrated and organized 
today in the hands of men with hearts of iron? He 
would be broken, crushed, annihilated like a fly upon 
an auto- wheel. That’s why I have given up all hope 
of seeing real industrial reforms accomplished in our 
time. You and I remember when a salaried man, earn- 
ii^g^ $15 a week, was a little prince of democracy, 
living in comfort and abundance; able to afford the 
luxury of having a home, a wife and children, and 
saving a little money for a rainy day. Now, we see 
that same $i5-a-week man relegated to life in a real 
grim Ghetto of his own. His wage is th^ same, but 
the Universal Industries’ Association, that cor- 
morant absorber of all the trusts, receives all his wages 
in the form of payments for household supplies and 
for the rent of his little tenement. It’s because of the 
hopelessness of the present state of affairs that I have 


28 


DRIFTING. 


been trying, by any and every means, to get all I can 
out of the rich, so as to give it to the poor.^’ 

“Yes, I know that’s your way, Warren,” said the 
doctor, “and far be it from me to say that your strange 
gospel is not to be justified; but there are signs of the 
dawn of a better day.” 

“You’ll have to show me how, doc, before I’ll 
believe it,” Warren interjected. 

“It’s so, nevertheless; and it’s just to such young 
bloods as this boy. Lodge, that we may look for the 
emancipation.” 

“Doctor, I heard just such things prophesied of 
yourself when you were a newspaper reporter on 
Chicago’s Labor Row not less than twenty years ago.” 

Dunbfoundment now possessed the doctor. Sur- 
prised and somewhat abashed he stared in blank 
amazement at the labor leader, whose looks and man- 
ner indicated that no joke was meatnt. 

“Was it really so, Warren? How could any such 
high hopes have been built on me?” 

His voice was tremulous — the voice of this strong 
man and experienced physician. But his question 
remained without answer. 

Warren was not heedless. His emotions had been 
aroused. He was sympathetic, but abstracted ; lost in 
secret admiration of the doctor. 

“Was it really so?” repeated the physician, in a 
whisper almost inaudible from suppressed feeling. 

“It was so, doc, and it is so yet ; the toiling masses 
know that your heart is in the right place.” 


DRIFTING. 29 

With a deep sigh the doctor placed his elbows on 
his knees and buried his face in his hands. 

God, my God, how my heart does bleed for 
them; it breaks for them,” he muttered, more in 
soliloquy than in answer to the avowal of Warren, 
who through respect for the man, and because of sor- 
row for having caused such anguish, had withdrawn 
shamefacedly to the company of other acquaintances 
in a distant compartment of the smoking car. 

V 


30 


DRIFTING. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Some minutes elapsed before the reverie of the 
doctor was broken. When he looked up he found 
himself face to face once more with John Lodge, who 
had taken the seat vacated by Warren. A genial and 
sympathetic smile illuminated John’s face — a face 
that was even more attractive for its expression of 
kindness and benevolence than for the regularity of 
feature yclept good looks. From the depths of his 
eyes, which are brown and large ad luminous, came a 
glance whose kindly message of sympathy could not 
be mistaken as he said : 

“Doctor, you have been pained by something or 
other? I hope that poor fellow, Warren, said nothing 
offensive to you. Much should be forgiven the work- 
ing people of our time, because they love much. It is 
indeed a great love for their wives and children that 
makes them think a slavish life of constant toil worth 
the living from day to day.” 

Emotion akin to amazement was aroused in the 
doctor by John’s brief utterance. So this young man 
also has the heart and the mind and the soul to feel 
true sympathy for the toiling masses of the people — • 
the creators of the billions of the surplus wealth of 
the world — the recipients, not of any just portion of 
the rewards of their labor, but of the crumbs and 
pickings only ! 


DRIFTING. 


31 


^‘No, it was not poor Warren’s fault; something 
which he said aroused distressing and distracting 
memories, that’s all,” said the physician. “In Chicago 
this man Warren is called the Robin Hood of the 
labor movement. He is the exponent and leader of a 
curious latter-day creed that labor is entitled to all the 
money it can lay its hands on — to rob the rich so as 
to give to the poor ; the rich to be robbed being, as far 
as possible, the great so-called captains of industry or 
their families and descendants ; the poor to be benefited 
being the poor of the working classes, who are now 
the poor that are ever with us.” 

“Then it is clear that Warren must be rather an 
extraordinary character,” John said, quietly. 

“He has been so considered, and what often troubles 
rne is that I cannot in my conscience wholly condemn 
his code of ethics, or the ethics of his followers.” 

“Neither can I condemn them,” said John. 

“Since those remarks you made a moment ago, 
implying that you feel deeply for the toiling masses, 
I have been wondering,” said the doctor, “whether you 
would forgive them if you really understood the awful 
terrorism with which they win strikes and the shady 
or corrupt methods with which their leaders obtain 
money and bribes from private corporations?” 

There was a pause for a reply from John. It was 
not forthcoming. Perhaps this was one of the matters 
on which he had not made up his mind. His look was 
abstracted. He seemed lost in thought. In college 
he had maintained as a debater that no prophet could 
ever have foreseen the magnitude or momentousness 


32 


DRIFTING. 


of the irrepressible conflict between organized capital 
and organized labor in the nineteenth and twentieth 
Centuries, and that if the sphinx of Egypt had been 
asked to forecast a solution of the modern industrial 
problem she would, no doubt, have increased her pres- 
tige as a mystifier by returning a sublimely enigmatical 
answer. 

With the doctor’s finely modulated voice falling 
again quite gently upon the ear John Lodge was re- 
called to the present. 

What the doctor said was this : “It is a great pleas- 
ure to know that you are in sympathy with the people 
who do the real hard work of the world and who seem 
to get little of the rewards worth having, but so richly 
earned and merited.” 

“Yes, I certainly have sympathy for them,” replied 
John, “and I only wish I could translate that sympathy 
into performance.” 

“You can do that; we all can do it,” said the doctor. 

“How ?” 

“By doing one man’s part toward helping the toilers 
to remain self-sustaining always, so that their self-re- 
spect may not be ruined by acceptances of alms-house 
favors from the very rich, or from the pharisees in 
the ranks of the moderately rich and the merely well- 
to-do.” 

“Oh, I would want to do more than that — to fight 
with every available weapon the battle for industrial 
emancipation.” 

“How would you proceed with such a Herculer.n 
task, grantig that you had some suitable weapons 


DRIFTING. 


33 


ready to hand?” asked the doctor, his interest increas- 
ing and becoming manifested in his apparent readiness 
to be an eager listener. 

“There are many ways in which good might be done 
— and must be done — if society and the race are to con- 
tinue,” said John, very quietly but with much firmness. 

“You wouldn’t try socialism, the panacea that many 
consider the inevitable outcome of present conditions 
in the industrial and political world?” 

“Socialism has some fascinating aspects,” said John, 
“but a better thing would be to restore in its complete- 
ness the noble individualism — the splendid democracy 
— of our fathers. 

“That seems impossible,” said the doctor. 

“Yes, it may be indeed too late for such a thing, 
but nevertheless it should be worth a trial at the hands 
of the great American people.” 

“Whoever should be so foolhardy as to try it by in- 
augurating a campaign to that end would be defeated 
and ruined by the power of money.” 

“Perhaps so; but if the people were thoroughly alive 
to their interests and their rights, the task might not 
be so hard.” 

A serious, almost frightened look crept upon the 
kindly, frank and honest face of the doctor. He is a 
sincere believer in the doctrine of peaceable arbitration 
of all disputes, whether in the industrial world or 
among the nations. Wars and revolutions and labor 
troubles are abhorrent to him. He thinks them bar- 
barous and unnecessary ; barren of all true reforms and 


34 


DRIFTING. 


futile as a lasting remedy for ills of the industrial 
body, or the body politic. 

He regards this young man’s expressions as thinly- 
veiled hints of extreme views. Layig his shapely pale- 
pink hand upon John’s quivering knee he said, with 
suppressed anxiety : 

'Tlease go ahead and express your views more 
fully; I am deeply interested.” ^ 

It was John Lodge’s turn to be amazed and he shrunk 
within himself as if resenting that anybody should 
have dared to try and read his soul’s most secret 
thoughts. Quick to realize the chill in John’s demean- 
our, the doctor became extremely suave and gentle. 

“Pardon me, but I do not wish to be guilty of the 
least indelicacy,” he said, “and if you wish to change 
the subject, or your company, I will be glad to recog- 
nize that you are strictly within your rights.” 

“Not at all, doctor, your company is most agreeable 
and highly appreciated,” said John, with a reassuring 
and conciliatory smile. 

“Then, please proceed apace with your delightful 
exposition of your views on any and every subject.” 

“It is very kind of you to label my prosy views as 
delightful,” replied John. “But, as you invite them, 
you shall have them. In truth I am glad of the oppor- 
tunity to open my mind to a man of your wide experi- 
ence, especially as I have understood you were once a 
newspaper man yourself.” 

“So I was, and if my advice or experience can be 
of any benefit, I will cheerfully give them to you at 
any time,” 


DRIFTING. 


35 


By way of preliminary John Lodge made it plain 
that he believes the constitution of society from the 
earliest age of history has been ‘‘all wrong.” Instead 
of resting on its proper and only legitimate base, the 
people, it has rested or stood upon its apex, the few 
rich and unscrupulous persons in the social organism. 
In wars for territorial advantage or conquest the com- 
mon people are shoved to the front to be shot down, 
or to do the real hard work of winning the battles for 
the oligarch. In the strife for Commercial gain or 
advantage it is also the common people who are 
pushed into the breach to do the real hard work of 
physical and manual labor. They are at the top for 
work; at the bottom in acquisition of the fruits of 
toil. It takes only a slight shock or storm to bring 
such an ill-balanced industrial organism toppling to 
the ground. 

Revolutions and civil wars are the names given to 
these shocks and storms ; in them the few presumptuous 
ones, who have been oppressing the community with 
misrule, are crushed; chaos ensues and the people 
have a chance ; but they are too ignorant or too indo- 
lent to maintain their freedom and keep the few exec- 
utive officials in the position of servants, not rulers. 

Or another description of existing society might 
be that it is a gigantic tree to whose fruit the people 
have the best right, but into which they climb — or 
have been forced or pitchforked — and among whose 
branches they work like senseless monkeys gathering 
the ripe fruit only to cast it, before satisfying their 
own proper wants, into the gaping maws of wily ser- 


f 


36 DRIFTING. 

p'ents who bask lazily in the delightful shade of 
orchards to whose fruit they have little or no right 
or title. 

“It is easy to see who the serpents are,” said John. 

“Yes, I suppose you mean those who have been 
given or have taken such advantage of the people that 
themselves or their descendants do not need to per- 
form physical labor for a living.” 

“I mean the luxuriously rich,” said John. “In 
nearly all cases they, or their ancestors, have taken 
advantage of the people ; for no advantages over the 
people could rightfully have been given or conferred, 
since all rights of the people are natural rights, and 
whosoever uses them for private aggrandizement has 
his title to such aggradizement only in the folly of the 
people and can hold it only on their sufferance.” 

“But how, if it is true that the people often are 
incompetent to finance and manage their own affairs?” 
asked the doctor. 

“No people of any race or nation have ever been 
incompetent except to defeat the work of the few dis- 
honest men who by temperament are public plunderers, 
and who are ever plotting to enrich themselves at the 
public expense.” 

“But,” said the doctor, “the power of wealth and 
established institutions is so tremendous it would take 
a revolution — the bloodiest and most terrible of all the 
world’s revolutions — to overthrow the present order 
of things.” 

“It may be that you are right as to that,” answered 


DRIFTING. 


37 


John, '‘but it cannot be said that all peaceable meas- 
ures have been tried and found wanting.” 

“Wbat would you do, Mr. Lodge? What could you 
do ?” 

"If I had the means I could and would strike a 
blow at the Achilles heel, or most vulnerable spot, of all 
industrial oppression — the unholy alliance between the 
trust newspapers and the large advertisers — an alli- 
ance through which the instrument and creation of 
the people’s freedom is made a scorpion-whip for the 
peoples’ oppression and betrayal — an alliance having 
its inspiration in a public plunderers’ agreement 
whereby all exposure of rich employers’ oppressive- 
ness toward labor is bought off with paid advertise- 
ments that are virtually the price of the peoples’ blood 
' and toil.” 


38 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER V. 

Great boss though he was, Hiram B. Warren was 
not boss of everything. His wife bossed him. He was 
lord of the labor world but was a slave in his own 
home. Lavinia Tucker Warren, the muscular woman 
he had married twenty years before ruled him abso- 
lutely with her strong arms and strong mind. Through 
him she also ruled much of the industrial and labor 
world of the time, calling strikes or settling them with 
a word or a nod. 

Millionaire manufacturers and other employers hav- . 
ing strikes or the menace of labor troubles to deal with 
found early in the remarkable career of this woman’s 
husband that the best and easiest road to industrial 
peace was to be secured by interesting Lavinia on the 
side of the particular firm or other employer upon 
whose enterprise the dreadful ban of the labor strike 
had been placed, or was about to be placed. 

There was only one way in which Mrs. Warren 
could be induced by employers to take an interest on 
the side of peace. That way lay through the social 
side of life. Unless the employers desiring the favor 
of having the strike ban lifted or avoided sent the 
fine ladies of their families — their wives, sisters or 
daughters — in their liveried equipages around to the 
front door of the humble cottage in which the War- 


DRIFTING. 39 

rens lived, it were useless to seek a settlement or 
avoidance of any strike in Chicago. 

When the fine ladies came to make their social calls 
and beg for labor peace to avert financial ruin from 
their loved ones and themselves Mrs. Warren chose 
to receive them in the plebeian raiment known as a 
calico wrapper. “Gowned’’ in the same inexpensive 
but diaphanous habiliment she was wont to dismiss 
her enforced guests, often sweeping ahead of them 
down the somewhat rickety front steps of her cottage 
home, assisting them into equipages or automobiles 
and always taking care to make much of the opportun- 
ity to chat pleasantly at their carriage doors with the 
grand dames of the smart set before their departure. 
She was thus enabled mightily to impress her neigh- 
bors with her social importance by insinuating or 
openly claiming that she was in the enjoyment of the 
friendship and consideration of the great ones of the 
earth. 

“I am invited everywhere, but go nowhere,” she 
was wont to say. “Repeatedly I have been urged to 
call socially at the greatest mansions on the Lake 
.Shore Drive and the boulevards of fashion. Hiram 
has money — lots of it — and I could penetrate smart 
society, if I cared for the life of a society queea. But 
I prefer to bring the grand dames to my feet. Those 
of them who have ever tried to snub me or cut my 
acquaintance at church or in the driveways, have been 
humbled in double-quick time by having the men of 
their families embarrassed and harrassed by a strike or 


40 


DRIFTING. 


labor war that I have put in force for sweet venge- 
ance sake.” 

It was never charged that Lavinia Warren accepted 
largess of money, or presents, or bribes in any form 
for effecting settlement of the strike questions of the 
day. Truth compels the avowal, however, that her hus- 
band was not supposed to be as incorruptible as she. 
It had been broached in the aftermath of diverse sen- 
sational strikes that he was the head of a ring of labor 
agitators who in times of labor peace were accustomed 
to levy tribute off employers and contractors — the said 
tribute being alleged to have taken the form of 
“fines” collected from firms and business men because 
of these employers supposed violations of decrees and - 
mandates of the labor unions. It should be said, how- 
ever, that nothing had ever been proven against War- 
ren as to the acceptance of these bribes or labor 
“fines” — yclept blackmail in hostile parlance — but it 
was said to be much more likely that he had grown 
rich from the seven or eight political salaries that his 
standing as a powerful leader of the masses of the 
labor-union voters enabled him to draw regularly 
every month from the quasi-secret or “stuffed” pay- 
rolls of the politicians in office for the moment at the 
head of government machinery in state and nation, city 
and county, and “district sanitary.” 

His proudest boast was that not less than one-half 
of the total amount of his monthly income from all 
sources was donated by him to the poor and unfor- 
tunate and unemployed who had fallen by the wayside 
in the grand march of the labor movement. Moreover, 


DRIFTING. 


41 


it was to be noted that whenever he made that boast 
there was no one so rash in all the ranks of union 
labor as to gainsay him in the least. 

The secret of this unique leader’s power was often 
explained as follows : It was said to be his rule of 
life to plead guilty to grafting and similar iniquities 
whenever he was speaking merely to one person ; but 
if he spoke in the hearing of more than one witness 
he acknowledged no trait but sainthood. 

For the governance and guidance of this man in his 
own home, his wife, as ruler of the domestic hearth, 
had formulated and mightily impressed upon him the 
following household code of rules for which she de- 
manded and received the most absolute and abject 
obedience on his part : 

First — He must make only one aperture a week in each 
of his stockings. 

Second . — He must hang up the towel strictly by the loop. 

Third . — He was required to remove his shoes in the vesti- 
bule or porch, and there exchange them for his slippers. 
This rule had to be lived up to both in the cold of winter 
and the heat of summer. 

Fourth . — It was not permissible for him to leave his comb 
off his hairbrush. 

Fifth . — He was allowed to have a wastebasket in the house, 
but he did not dare to throw old papers or any other waste 
thing into its presanctified bosom. 

Sixth .— had a cuspidor in his den, but he did not dare 
to use it as a cuspidor. 

Seventh . — He was forbidden to say or hint at home or 
abroad that he was “a henpecked husband.” 

His years of suppression and bondage in his home 


42 


DRIFTING. 


had their effect in time upon the great labor boss. He 
became “nervous in patches.” That was at first his 
own description of his condition. He felt or believed 
that the nervous patches were two more or less imag- 
inary concentric rings or ridges near the base of his 
skull and just behind his right ear. These concentric 
ridges formed what he thought was a phrenological 
bump of sinister import. 

“That is my bump of nervousness” he said to himself 
in soliloquy years ago, when he fancied that with his 
fingers he discovered the first outlines of the “growth.” 

Ever afterward his busy fussy fingers seemed to 
find that particular part of his cerebral rooftree the 
moment a domestic storm began to threaten him. He 
knew better than to be anything but silent and sub- 
missive in the imperial presence of his wife, but it was 
a consolation to him to have this nervous bump on 
which to scratch deep his secret thoughts. Thus the 
bump became the diary of his family troubles. And in 
the course of time it became even more invaluable 
than a diary. It became his barometer of domestic 
conditions — and a most accurate barometer at that. 
It gave him infallible warning of the approach of 
feminine storms at his home. 

Whenever trouble was brewing for him at Lavinia’s 
hands the bump became so ticklish that it instantly 
got the attention of the most deft and delicate titilation 
of which Warren was capable with his finger nails. It 
was not long before he learned unerringly to interpret 
its unerring message. More true and prompt than a 
wireless telegram, the bump registered on Warren^s 


DRIFTING. 


43 


cranial epidermis the disturbance or disturbances in 
the mind or bosom of Lavinia, whether she happened 
to be miles away or near at hand. 

As a weather forecaster for domestic use this 
bump of Warren’s had no equal. It was an evolu- 
tion, a phrenological growth, originated and devel- 
oped out of the Laviniana in the Warren family. In 
the course of time it became a barometer which 
forecasted not only his domestic troubles but all his 
personal woes. It was a telepathic instrument of 
unsurpassed and unapproachable power — a sort of 
electric gong whose delicate, tingling mechanism 
infallibly rang its warning messages at the very gate- 
way of his brain. 

We would fain discredit the supposition that War- 
ren’s nervous bump might have proved to be quite 
active during this journey on the fast train to Chi- 
cago, but no such denial is possible in view of the 
unmistakable signs and tokens noted by Dr. Barrett, 
who has full knowledge of the quaint story of the 
bump and has been observing for some time with 
silent amusement the vigorous way in which the 
great labor boss has been scratching his head — per- 
haps belaboring the poor bump. And when the 
brakeman at last called out in strident, unmistakable 
words, ‘'Chicago: far as we go,” is seemed as if the 
bump could not have given Warren more trouble 
and annoyance, or obtain from him more furious 
digital attention, were it a smoldering volcano 
about to burst his head, or a stick of dynamite which 
he wished to disentangle from his hair. 


44 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Part I. 

In the great depot of the Lake Shore railroad in 
Chicago are to be seen many groups of people, some 
of them passengers alighting from the fast eastern 
train just arrived on time from New York. Warren 
is the center of one group. He is engaged in earn- 
est conversation with his companions. 

John Lodge and the doctor are indulging in pre- 
liminary words of leave-taking and in the exchange 
of visiting cards, coupled with reciprocal and cor- 
dial invitation to the cultivation of further acquaint- 
ance. 

Miss Norwell had alighted and was hurrying away. 
She was already lost to the gaze of John, who had 
followed her with his eyes until she disappeared 
somewhere in the maze of waiting rooms in the vast 
building. 

Waving farewells to Warren the doctor and John 
left for the main door on Van Buren street, where 
they parted, each hurrying away to a downtown des- 
tination. 

Not so Mr. Warren and his companions. They 
lingered about the depot platform, having now 
broken up into little knots — two or three persons 


DRIFTING. 


45 


to each knot. Only a few of the men in this party 
had been on the train with Warren. The others 
were members of Chicago labor assemblies or unions 
who had come to consult the great leader, Warren — 
Chicago’s “labor boss” — about some question of 
policy or diplomacy in dealing with an impending 
strike or lockout. 

It was an animated conference that was being car- 
ried on in this informal way, Warren going from 
group to group of the somewhat excited “walking 
delegates” of the workingmen and advising judicious 
conciliation, with a view to effecting settlements as 
promptly and easily as possible with the employers. 
His words had great weight, winning expressive 
and respectful nods of assent from the men in the 
several little groups. 

Just at the moment that the Warren party was 
beginning to move for the exits from the platform a 
flashily dressed young man, who had stood watching 
and waiting at some distance, was recognized by the 
labor leader. It was only a second until Warren was 
at the young man’s side. 

“Ah, Ed Randall, old man; did you get Frank’s 
two cipher telegrams?” said Warren, in accents but 
little above a whisper. 

“Why, did he send two? I got only one.” 

“Oh yes, he sent two, but he was afraid you 
wouldn’t get the last in time,” said Warren. 

“Well, I’ll be thundered! That second message 
will explain how I missed the old hayseed and the 
girl in his charge.” 


46 


DRIFTING. 


“No doubt it will. You see, I really know nothing 
about the deal and must not be counted in it for a 
minute. But Frank recognized me aboard the train 
as we stopped at Blue Pigeon. He stepped on the 
platform for a moment and asked me to tell you 
that the old man was not coming on the same train 
with the girl. The twain had had a serious quarrel 
at the last moment, he said, but the girl had pluck 
and pride, and she came alone.’' 

“Oh, then I have missed her. I rather guessed 
that was she with the packages in newspaper wrap- 
pings, and wearing the broken shoe. Well, goodbye, 
Mr. Warren. I had better get her in tow, if she’s not 
gone. You see, her guardian, old hayseed with the 
money-bags, may be glad to come down with some coin 
for information as to her whereabouts, should he fol- 
low her down here in a repentant mood, and not be 
able to find her very easily.” 

“Ah, that’s the plot, is it?” 

“Yes, it is, good-bye, Warren, good-bye; I must 
find her.” 

“Wish you luck, but be sure that my name must 
not be connected in any way with the gang or your 
bunko game.” 

“No fear of that, Mr. Warren, we have sense 
enough to know our friends.” 

“I hope so, Randall, for though I am the friend of 
all good-hearted people who try to put the hoarded 
treasure of capital in circulation, still the interest of 
union labor is the great cause commanding my al- 


DRIFTING. 


47 


legiance ; and if labor is injured through the un- 
guarded mixing up of my name with bunko schemes, 
I will strike out of the dark, and so quickly it will 
make your head swim.” , 

Just at this moment Warren’s own head began to 
swim. He caught a glimpse of a quaint but familiar 
figure hovering at no great distance. It was his wife, 
the strenuous and impressive Lavinia, who, unex- 
pectedly, had come to meet him^at the train. She 
was gesticulating impatiently — like a cumbersome 
craft straining violently at anchor in the offing of 
bay or harbor. Her husband endeavored to let on 
that he had not noticed her, and he felt safe for the 
nonce. She was avowedly averse to making a “scene” 
out of doors, unless she felt herself ignored or 
slighted. Then she was liable to descend like a 
whirlwind upon her husband, the labor boss, whom 
she was wont to address in her furious moments by 
the peculiar anti-pet name she had invented for him 
in her honeymoon — “the human vampire.” 

Involuntarily, poor Warren’s right hand sought 
the location of the nervous bump behind his right 
ear. That was enough. He felt that the movement 
had been observed — that the ruler of his home now 
would know he was ignoring her. He raised his 
gaze and afifected a little start of surprise as if he 
had only just seen, for the first time this day, his 
uncrowned queen, his conqueror. She was now 
within a few steps of him, having gradually veered 
aw'ay from her mooring near a big pillar. 


I 


48 


DRIFTING. 


/ 


^'Lavinia!” he shouted throwing himself into her 
arms. 

“How dare you, sir, how dare you embrace me in 
a public place ?” she snapped. “Now, sir, come away 
at once with me. You have ignored me as long as I 
will stand — ignored your lawful wedded wife for that 
frisky little dude. Upon my sacred honor, I did not 
know for a long time whether to be jealous, or what, 
as it was not easy to tell at a distance whether the 
object engaging your attention was a dude or a 
dudine. Now, sir, come home and give an account 
of yourself.” 

As his wife led, almost dragged him from the 
scene, the great labor boss dared to glance back just 
once. Then the so-called dude waved a smiling 
farewell, exclaiming at the same time in accents of 
merry banter: 

“Have no fear for my discretion, Mr. Warren. I 
fully appreciate your delicate position. Good-bye 
again — good-bye, good-bye.” 

Like a hawk fiercely pursuing its prey in a forest 
wilderness the young man swooped through the laby- 
rinth of halls and vestibules and waiting rooms of 
the magnificent depot in quest of the stranger from 
the country. His search was in vain; she had dis- 
appeared and he was in despair. He muttered a 
string of imprecations against Warren for detaining 
him, but he was imbued with a wholesome fear of 
the powerful and terrible labor boss. 

Instinctively he glanced backward, lest he should 
be followed or overheard. His eyes met the soft, 


DRIFTING. 


49 


lambent gaze of Miss Norwell, who was only a few 
feet behind and coming his way. He gave a little 
start of surprise, half-suppressed though sufficient 
to attract the girl’s attention. But he was equal to 
the occasion. Quickly regaining his composure, he 
turned squarely around and accosted the girl with a 
respectful bow. 

“I fear you have forgotten me. Miss Norwell,” he 
said, deferentially. 

“I certainly have,” she answered, coming to an 
abrupt and formal halt 

“Well, my name is Will Bayard and I am a Burgis 
boy. I have often seen you at country fairs in Blue 
Pigeon, Onion City and round about there.” 

' “Well, sir, I don’t remember ever meeting you,” 
she said, with a haughty toss of the head. 

“Oh, I knew a young friend of yours very well, 
Hope Morton; poor fellow is dead, I hear.” 

With this adroit reference it was clear to him he 
had disarmed the girl of any suspicions she may 
have entertained. She was at once affected — deeply 
affected, it seemed to the young man, as he fancied 
he saw the silvery glisten of big tears in the formative 
process within her honest eyes. 

“So you knew him,” she murmured, toying with 
her foot and keeping her gaze on the ground to hide 
her emotion. 

“Why, yes, we were schoolboys together,” said the 
young man, smiling furtively. 

“Ah, I do believe I heard him speak of a young 


50 


DRIFTING. 


friend of his with a name like yours, but I always 
thought it was Bain, not Bayard.” 

“No doubt it was myself. Chauncey Pinckney was 
your guardian, ‘I believe.” 

“Yes,” replied the girl in soft, quiet tones. 

After a pause, designed to give her the opportun- 
ity to converse freely on her affairs, the young man 
said, with well-assumed bashfulness : 

“If you are wholly a stranger in Chicago, it would 
give me pleasure to escort you about our great city 
for an hour, or so. It is so rare to meet an interest- 
ing visitor from the old place in Michigan.” 

Extremely well-bred for a country girl. Miss Nor- 
well hesitated as to her course. She was completely 
a stranger in this big city, about which she had heard 
and read so much that was bad and dark and dread- 
ful. It behooved her to be very cautious and to go 
slow in accepting attention from chance acquaint- 
ances. Yet, on the other hand, here was a young 
man of good appearance and what seemed the man- 
ners of a gentleman. Why should she not accept 
his company, especially as he had undoubtedly some 
knowledge of her home, her family relations, and 
appeared even to know some of her friends person- 
ally? Still, there was something about the young 
fellow that she did not altogether like. 

“You may come with me to the door,” she said, 
with a timorous, childlike glance implying that she was 
yielding only for the sake of not being thought 
obstinate. 


DRIFTING. 


51 


“Very well ; let me carry your parcels.” 

She gave him only one parcel and they moved 
along. But when the great arched doorway to the 
street was being passed the young man was talking 
so interestedly about the many sights and wonders 
of Chicago, the girl simply was not given a chance to 
bid him good-bye. So she continued with him step 
by step and block by block until they were within a 
few hundred yards of that great down-town shop- 
ping thoroughfare, State street. The girl, too, was 
chattering away ungardedly by this time. 

“Oh, there’s a big candy store,” she said, “with 
such lots of peppermint and taffy and marshmallows 
and fudge and ” 

“Yes, we’ll have some; and we’ll go to a theatre 
in the evening, if you’re remaining in town over 
night,” said her companion. 

“All right; we will see,” she responded, with an 
arch smile, and thinking seriously of the candy only. 

They entered. Candies of all sorts and sizes were 
soon selected by the country girl. 

When settlement of the bill was being made her 
notions of what was proper would not permit her to 
let the young man pay for more than half the sup- 
plies purchased. 

“Half will be yours, half mine,” she laughed, as 
she insisted on paying half the cost price. 

Her escort was puzzled, and his looks betrayed 
his state of feeling. It was so rare to find a girl in 


52 


DRIFTING. 


Chicago who would refuse to let a young or old man 
pay for anything in a candy store. 

“As you will,” said he, “but let us go out this 
way.” 

He threw open a swing door and, with the coun- 
try girl by his side, stepped into a marble hall 
through which quick and secret descent was gained 
to the subterranean vestibule of the so-called “ladies’ 
entrance” to a gilded drinking grotto, a modern 
temple of Bacchus. '' 

No one was in the room which the unsuspecting 
girl entered with this man. 

“This is a nice, c|uiet place to get a little refresh- 
ment,” he said, with his blandest smile. “You must 
need a sandwich after your rather long journey. So 
if you will be seated at that table over there, I will 
order a light lunch for both of us.” 

Without giving her time for a word in assent or 
dissent he disappeared into the bar room of the 
grotto. 

“Ah, Bert is not here, just now?” he said to the 
bar-keeper. 

“No, he won’t be down until night,” was the drink- 
mixer’s answer. 

“Well, you know me anyhow, and you’ll do just 
as well as Bert. You have seen me around with 
him and in here a gjeat deal?” 

‘ “I have.” 

“Then, if you are his friend and the friend of this 
joint you’ll put a nice safe little bit of dope in a lem- 


DRIFTING. 53 

onade for that ‘peach’ I have in there in the wine 
room.” 

“Any other drink except the lemonade?” 

“Why, yes; to be sure. And we want some lunch. 
Make it two chicken sandwiches ; and for my drink, 
a glass of beer. Have things ready in a few sec- 
onds; I will be back here to take them myself into 
the room there, as it is best that my very timid 
friend should not be seen, or see anybody.” 

It happened that his particular bar-keeper of Chi- 
cago had some feelings of honor. He was not in 
the business of bar-keeping because he loved it, but 
because he could not obtain a living wage at any- 
thing else to which he could turn his hands. Mechan- 
ically he set about making the lemonade, but he 
ceased from the work as soon as he heard the other 
man’s footsteps retreating in the distance. Then this 
bar-keeper stepped quickly across the grotto’s mosaic 
floor and entered the room in which sat Miss Nor- 
well. She was surveying her surroundings critically 
and seemed frightened and perplexed as it gradu- 
ally dawned upon her that she was in a beer hall. It 
was not necessary for the bar-keeper to speak a 
word to her in order to confirm his suspicion that she 
was a country girl and unaware of her real and im- 
minent peril at that moment. 

Whether by accident or purposely Algona had 
taken her seat beneath a fine American beauty rose 
that drooped from a tall beer glass on the marble 
mantel of the room into which she had been lured. 


54 


DRIFTING. 


It was a large and somewhat luxuriously furnished 
apartment. There were several ‘‘drinking tables'’ 
and numerous chairs. In the rear, about thirty feet 
away, was an alcove in which was an abundance of 
potted plants, palms and dwarf oleanders, with a 
scant quota of flowers — some few the flowers of na- 
ture and still others displaying the peculiar prim- 
ness, the sickly sheen, that proved them artificial. 
Almost concealed behind the banks of foliage and 
blossoms was an upright piano of a dull-brown and 
grimy color. Somewhere in the vicinity of the piano 
was a musician practicing on a violin. The votary 
of Stradivarius was playing softly and in a snatchy 
way only, but the hodge-podge or medley of popular 
tunes and operatic arias had a fascination for Algona, 
ill at ease though she was with the surroundings, 
and with her girlish speculations as to the kind of 
place in which she found herself. She was guilty of 
the almost unholy thought that the music rendered 
by the unseen player was much better than that pro- 
duced by Miss Ansilla Harper the village organist, 
on the diminutive house-organ in the First Congre- 
gational Church at Blue Pigeon. She recognized 
•some bars from “I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble 
Halls,” others from “The Star Spangled Banner,” 
and still others from “The Red, White and Blue.” 

But what she liked best — the tune which lingered 
in her recollection the longest — was a sprightly air 
unknown to her at the time, but which at a later 
day she discovered to be the celebrated drinking 


DRIFTING. 


55 


song from the opera Cavalleria Rusticaiia. Her girl- 
ish tasto for the innocent amusements of village 
dance halls was fired anew, and her imagination was 
now at work figuring out what a nice place Chicago 
must really be. She was lost in ecstacy at the tune- 
ful notes and did not hear the bar-keeper’s footsteps 
on the velvety carpets of the room. 

He had approached closely, almost to her elbow. 
He had hesitated lest his presence, when suddenly 
discovered, should give her a serious fright. 

But he heard just then a noise of approaching 
footfalls and he knew that the “escort” was return- 
ing and that no time was to be lost, if the innocent 
girl was to be saved. 

Without a word of preface, explanation or apol- 
ogy, the rough-and-ready bar-keeper took hold of 
the girl’s arm. She struggled and turned pale; then 
screamed a little and looked up into the man’s face. 
His grasp was firm, but his eyes were kindly. In a 
voice that was hushed somewhat, but intense and 
commanding, he spoke as follows : 

“That young fellow you are with is a thief, an 
ex-convict and a betrayer of innocent girls. He in- 
tends to drug you into unconsciousness and then 
ruin you. Even now he is arranging with a woman 
accomplice how to effect your ruin. If you have 
sense, and value your innocence, you will save your- 
self by getting out of here at once. Come! Out 
this side door here, and away. Here he comes, not 


56 


DRIFTING. 


a moment is to be lost. Fly, fly anywhere, but stay 
not here.” 

“My God! where am I? What sort of dreadful 
place is this,” said the girl, bewildered and is a daze. 

“I have told you; now save yourself; he is com- 
ing; go, go at once, and be more careful ot your 
company in future,” answered the barkeeper, holding 
the street door ajar. 

With a stifled scream she rushed from the place 
and, gaining the street, was almost in a run. Before 
she had gone one hundred feet she stumbled, and 
fell fainting on the sidewalk. 

“Get a policeman, she’s a pick-pocket trying to 
get away with her plunder; she has just come out of 
that saloon there,” said one of the men in the crowd 
of pedestrians. 

“Sir, how dare you speak that way of a good, inno- 
cent girl; she is no more a pick-pocket than you, 
your wife or daughter. Step along now about your 
busi«ess. I know her; I will care for her.” 

All fell back at the sound of this commanding 
voice, at once sympathetic and reproving; tender and 
respectful, and silvery sweet. It was the voice of 
John Lodge. 

i 

Part II. 

A policeman in uniform now arrived upon the 
scene. It was a crowded corner of State street, the 
thoroughfare that has I’leen called the busiest shop- 


DRIFTING. 


57 


ping mart in all the world. A great throng was 
pressing forward to get a view of the suffering girl’s 
face, the word having been passed along that she was 
“very pretty.” So compact was the mass of strug- 
gling and crushing women, the policeman, with evi- 
dent reluctance, resorted to force and the menace of 
his baton to gain access to the girl’s side. 

It happened that John knew the officer. When a 
reporter on a morning newspaper of Chicago, he had 
met this same policeman quite frequently. K few hur- 
ried words, whispered by John in the man’s ear, had 
a magical effect in gaining needed sympathy and co- 
operation at this moment. Presently a third person, 
Edward Randall, the self-styled honorable Bayard, 
pushed his way to Algona’s side. As her eyes 
opened they met the sympathetic gaze of John 
Lodge, whom she at once recognized, and she smiled 
her gratitude. Next she saw Randall or “Bayard,” 
whom she met with an icy glance. To John it 
seemed that she shuddered as she looked upon the 
man. She had now been assisted to her feet and 
was being led — almost carried — in the strong arms 
of John Lodge and the policeman. 

In a low tone she spoke some words to John. 
Then Randall, quick to divine danger, turned and at- 
tempted a dash through the gradually thinning 
crowd in the hope to effect his escape. He was too 
late. John Lodge confronted him. 

“Sir, you are a ruffian,” said John. “You should 
be horsewhipped.” 


58 


DRIFTING. 


^'Keep your temper, my good fellow; your pockets 
have been picked, your watch seems gone/’ rejoined 
Randall, smiling with bold effrontery. 

The hand that John had raised to chastise Randall 
now instinctively sought the watch pocket indicated 
by the fellow’s gesture. Sure enough, the watch 
given him by his mother at her death — an heirloom 
in her family for generations — was missing mys- 
teriously. 

Gone, too, was Randall. But the policeman had 
been observant. He gave chase to Randall and 
another young man, the pick-pocket ; probably Ran- 
dall’s accomplice. 

Because of the new excitement afforded by the 
chase in the crowded street the young woman and 
the incident of her fall were forgotten by everybody 
but John. He was glad of the distraction, much as 
he valued the stolen watch, and hailing a cab he 
assisted the girl into it, instructing the cabman to 
drive his charge to a certain respectable boarding 
house operated by the young people of a social set- 
tlement on Michigan avenue, and telling the girl that 
he would soon make inquiries there as to her con- 
dition. 

In their brief talk together John had learned from 
the girl that she was wholly a stranger in Chicago 
and had no special destination, except to find em- 
ployment as a clerk in some store or office. She, 
on the other hand, thought ^he had found a protec- 
tor and she thanked him effusively. So she was dis- 


DRIFTING. 


59 


appointed and piqued when she heard John's instruc- 
tions to the cabman and realized that he was not to 
be with her any further at this time, if ever. She 
had misunderstood then, she thought, what was the 
true character of this noble-looking young man, who 
seemed more concerned with the fate or recovery of 
his stolen watch than with the fate of a girl whom he 
knew to be a stranger in this great, wicked city on 
Lake Michigan shores. n 

Her pride was now touched, but she resolved that 
henceforth she would be as indifferent as he. She 
would not invite him to call on her — no, never. 

“It was my fate to learn your name, without in- 
tending it,” said John, as he handed her his card. 
“Here is my name and address and I shall be glad 
to be at your service any time you may command 
me. Miss Norwell, I believe is your name?” 

A quiet nod, somewhat stiff and formal was the 
girl’s only answer. She was much puzzled. Was this 
young man’s reason for avoidance of close acquaint- 
ance with her to be attributed to a chance recognition 
of her as she fled from the drinking grotto? Or 
did he hear and believe any of the uncomplimentary 
and cruel remarks she had overheard some cynical 
women and men make a moment after she had fallen 
from fright and terror? She failed to divine the true 
motive or motives for John’s shyness — his fine sense 
of delicacy coupled with his knowledge of metropol- 


6o 


DRIFTING. 


itan life and his foresight as to the evil construction 
that would be put upon his action should anybody 
recognize him as he rode away in a closed carriage 
with an unknown young woman who had been 
found prostrate on the public highway. 

John had only just handed the girl his card when 
the cab gave a lurch preliminary to starting. 

^‘Now, be assured, Miss Norwell, that the board- 
ing house is first class in every way, and you will 
be very comfortable there — good-bye.” 

Another cold and haughty bow was the girl’s only 
salute on parting. Her hand, rather large but finely 
shaped, with delicately moulded fingers, plump con- 
tour and pink nails, was still resting on the open 
window of the carriage at the moment the start was 
made. A card that he thought was the one he gave 
her was still clasped in her fingers. Soon he saw 
the hand withdrawn, but without the card, which 
fluttered and curvetted in the lake shore breeze; 
then fell flat at his feet upon the street pavement. 

With trembling hand John picked it up. It was a 
card entirely blank, save for the following words 
written with a pencil in a woman’s hand. 

“Let us continue to be strangers; don’t call to see 
me at all!” 

Just then a light buggy dashed along in front of 
John, who was now at the corner of Jackson Boule- 
vard and Wabash avenue. As the vehicle sped by. 


DRIFTING. 


6l 


John saw a young man lean forward and stare at 
him. Instantly John recognized the face. It was 
the same young fellow whom he was ready to chas- 
tise a few moments ago at Miss Norwall’s intimation 
that he had insulted her. To John he still seemed 
to display the same bold air of effrontery and non- 
chalance and defiance, but to all of which was now 
added a mocking smile or leer of triumph. It was 
evident he was giving chase to, or at lea^t trailing 
for his own purpose, the cab in which Miss Norwell 
was speeding southward in Wabash avenue. 

It was plain to John, as he saw Miss Norwell’s 
driver turn his horse to the west in Hubbard Court, 
instead of to the east, as directed, that there was an 
understanding, perhaps based on signals, between 
the cabman and the man in the pursuing buggy, and 
that the sinister look directed at him from the 
lighter vehicle meant as clearly as words could con- 
vey that this truculent insulter of the pretty country 
girl was convinced he would yet have her as his prey 
and completely within his power. John now made 
up his mind that the cabman was an accomplice of 
the insulting fellow in the buggy, or had been bribed 
in his interest. Moreover, John recalled how it was 
this same cabman’s persistent cry of ^‘cab, cab, sir,” 
that first attracted his attention and suggested the 
idea of getting a cab for Miss Norwell ; how the cab- 
man was impatient to drive away the very moment 
he had the girl in his vehicle and — most significant 


62 


DRIFTING. 


of all — how nothing’ had ben said by this cabman in 
the way of a hint as to whether he would or would 
not have to look to the lady for his fare. 

In fact so quickly did the cabman whip up and 
drive away that John had forgotten to pay the cab 
hire, though it had been his intention to make such 
payment before the start was made. 

Sick and sore of heart, fearful of the fate awaiting 
innocence and pitying the girl from the very depths 
of his soul, John Lodge now turned sadly away from 
the scene of his exciting, but disheartening experi- 
ence. He felt that there could be no doubt as to the 
beautiful Miss Norwell’s fate. Did he not see her 
being borne off into the very heart of the seamy side 
of Chicago — to the bad lands yclept the ‘devee,^’ in- 
stead of to the respectable boarding house he had 
designated? Beyond a doubt she would be impris- 
oned before night-fall in some gilded sepulchre, her 
marvelous beauty an object of sale and barter for 
the fierce lusts of rich debauchees and the no less 
fierce cupidity of some harpy of a landlady, the 
abominations of whose mode of living caused even 
a Shakespeare to experience a dearth of verbiage in 
depicting them. So sure was John as to her fate, 
and so affected by its pathos and its sadness and its 
villainy, that his finger-nails were buried deep from 
rage and sorrow in the tender flesh of his hands as 
he moved along in reverie. Nor did he care in the 


DRIFTING. 


63 


least on being observed by curious citizens as he - 
dried the gathering moisture from his eyes with a 
handkerchief. To the end of his career he was never 
ashamed of those glistening dewdrops. He would 
have despised himself then had he thought he could 
ever be ashamed of them; though he very well knew 
that many of the young men and old rakes of the 
time would scoflf at such emotion and greet it with 
coarse and ribald jests. ' „ 


64 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER VII. 

It had been the fate, the luck, the blessing of John 
Lodge that he had a good mother — good in the tru- 
est, broadest, dearest sense. Her descent she was 
able to trace in a direct line from families that 
combined the best blood of the New England puri- 
tans and the early Celtic Colonists of Maryland. 
Her father was a Hemingway of Hemington; her 
mother a Brooks of Boston. She was the exemplar 
and embodiment of all that is tender and true, sensi- 
tive and imaginative in the women of the Celts, com- 
bined with what is best and bravest in the sturdy 
race of the Puritans. Her husband was Eben Lodge, 
father of John. He was a typical Yankee trader and 
business man. With a twin brother, Alonzo by 
name, to whom he was deeply attached, Eben 
Lodge roamed the world in his early days, enjoying 
the travel and luxury that an ample inheritance 
afforded. In Brazil he parted with Alonzo, who 
there had become adviser-in-chief and American 
financial agent to the Emperor. 

When the Civil War broke out Eben Lodge was 
spending a vacation on a Virginia ranch that had 
been the property of his mother’s ancestors for gen- 
erations. It was soon the gossip among the pro- 
slavery people of the district that his opinions were 


DRIFTING. 


65 


strongly in favor of the emancipation of the enslaved 
black race. A mounted band of cowboy '‘vigilants” 
who were equipped with ropes for lynching, or for las- 
soing, as the need may be, made a call at the ranch one 
day. They were looking for the master, but failed 
to find him. They did find, however, an old negro 
ex-slave, who had been given his freedom by Mr. 
Lodge, but would not take it. This faithful old man 
the vigilants strung up by the thumbs because he. 
would not name to them the place in which they 
believed the master must be hiding. He was re- 
leased more dead than alive. 

“Sambo, take this- word to your master, this 
Yankee man named Lodge,” said the leader of the 
band. “Tell him that we will call around and hang 
him to that tree near his veranda if he does not 
withdraw the things he has been saying against the 
men of the south. We will wait two days for his 
apology. If it has not reached me by that time, 
then this rope and that limb will settle matters for 
him at noon on the third day.” 

At noon the third day Eben Lodge was sitting be- 
neath the shady branches of the mighty oak tree upon 
which the vigilants of the southland had threatened to 
hang him. 

He had sent word promptly that he would not 
withdraw a word he had said against the southern 
states or in favor of the abolition of slavery, but he 
would be at home at noon on the third day and 
he would then be found beneath the pleasant shade 


66 


DRIFTING. 


of the oak-tree at his door. So he had made his 
preparations and kept his word. He had built him- 
self a rustic fort at the foot of the gnarled tree. 
The place was an arsenal out-of-doors. With loaded 
rifles, shot-guns and revolvers close at hand all 
around him, and with the faithful Sambo ready to 
aid in the fight and do the re-loading of firearms, 
this plucky anti-slavery patriot was prepared to sell 
his life dearly — but the enemy never came. 

Returning to Boston early in the 70’s, Eben Lodge 
established himself in cozy bachelor’s quarters in the 
Back Bay section of New England’s delightful me- 
tropolis. A profound scholar, he very naturally was 
a great lover of books. 

He was an indefatigable student of literature, his- 
tory and mental philosophy, especially the pseudo- 
science known as political economy. Also ethics and 
religion commanded his attention. He was an au- 
thority on the comparative literature purporting to 
deal exhaustively with his favorite topics, and he 
discussed them in written treatises so radical as to 
verge on the borderland of the revolutionary. A 
majority of the volumes from his pen have re- 
mained unpublished, as he was strongly averse to 
trying men’s souls, before the predestined time, with 
the fierce fires of economic-industrial truth. He be- 
came a recluse and a bibliophile, collecting countless 
tomes and writing others and planning that all, in- 
cluding his unpublished manuscripts, might be left 
at his death, to the library of his beloved Alma 


DRIFTING. 67 

Mater, Harvard University. In this way he lived 
and read and wrote for almost twenty years. 

Then he met Miss Margaret Hemingway, a beau- 
tiful girl of twenty. Although there was great dis- 
parity in their ages they fell in love at first sight. 
They married and lived a life of wedded bliss for 
seven months. Then Eben Lodge died. 

Death came to him as the result of an accident. 
In trying to save the life of a child he lost his own. 
He was crushed under the juggernaut wheels of a 
big wagon in a runaway escapade of wild horses. 
He died as he had lived, an altruist doing good as 
he perceived it, and from no other motive than the 
unselfish and noble promptings of the love to do 
the right. It was a heroic end, but none too ex- 
alted for him. It was eminently worthy of such a 
man. 

He had been planning for himself and his young 
wife a long visit to the absent brother on the South 
American continent. Now the bride was left sor- 
rowing. 

To the bereaved one, however, he had devised a 
fortune sufficiently ample to maintain her in com- 
fort, bequeathing to Harvard his library and other 
literary treasures only in the event that his unborn 
child should not be a boy. If a girl should be born, 
the library was to go to the University; if a boy the 
• books and manuscripts in the collection should re- 
main in the family for the use and enjoyment of 
the boy and his descendants. 


68 


DRIFTING. 


With his mother, who voluntarily promised her 
dying husband that she would never wed again — 
and kept her promise — John was for years a resi- 
dent of a beautiful country place at Quadrant, Mass. 
His childhood days were cradled almost under the 
shadows of Cabot Cliff, a jetty of mammoth rock 
ledges on the Atlantic coast and upon whose sum- 
mit, in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, 
stood the splendid villa of a statesman allied quite 
closely in patronymic relations with the new Eng- 
land house of Lodge. 

Round about those rugged rocks, and in the flow- 
ering wildwoods skirting the little town, John 
Lodge, when a schoolboy, played and roamed and 
frolicked as all schoolboys are wont to do. He was 
no better and no worse than the other schoolbovs 
of the hamlet — his mother never permitting him to 
think himself better, nor ever finding it necessary to 
believe that he was worse. 

For the sake of the companionship that a daugh- 
ter would afford her in bereavement, the mother of 
John had permitted herself to hope, before his birth, 
that her life would be blessed with a baby girl. But 
this was not to be; and of course, after John had 
arrived, the fond mother would not part with him 
for a million girls. 

As a boy he loved to be with the other boys of 
his age and, as their playmate, enjoyed all their 
juvenile games and pleasures; but in the company 
of girls he always felt most at ease, and he enter- 


DRIFTING. 69 

tained for them the tenderest, truest feelings of 
friendship, chivalry and loyal good will. 

No youth ever enjoyed life more thoroughly than 
John Lodge. When he entered Harvard his mother, 
that she might be ever near him, took up her resi- 
dence again in her husband’s old home at Boston. 

In his class-room work John was not at first con- 
sidered very brilliant; but this was not because of 
any lack of natural gifts; rather was it because of a 
certain timidity or modesty which made him shrink 
from any idea of becoming conspicuous by forging 
too far to the front in scholarship. It happened that 
the time came when his attainments of mind, and 
his splendid intellectual poise, were made amply 
manifest ; and in his course at the famous Univer- • 
sity in his final year he simply “swept all before 
him,” graduating with the highest honors. 

He was in the law school, nearing the end of the 
legal course, when a great calamity befell him. It 
was the death of his mother — a terrible blow to 
one with his fine sensibilities and affectionate nature, 
but doubly a grief because it left him alone and prac- 
tically without close ties of kindred or friendship in 
all the w'orld. To get away from his great grief he 
he took a long trip through the south and west, , 
spending one winter in New Mexico, Texas and 
Arizona, and another in that land of flowers and 
balmy breezes — California. 

It was at this time that he began writing for the 
newspapers. He soon had the news-getting fever 




70 


DRIFTING. 


in its worst form. Next it was quite natural that he 
should gravitate to that remarkable city which so 
often has been swept from center to circumference 
by industrial typhoons of economic revelation and 
the most feverish newsiness — the same great bee- 
hive of humanity where we have just seen him al- 
most in tears over the sad fate that he believed was 
to be the portion of the beautiful Miss Norwell. 


DRIFTING. 


71 


CHAPTER VIIL 

Whenever John Lodge happened to be on State 
street, the great shopping thoroughfare of Chicago, 
at an hour when the daily parade of shoppei:;s was at 
its flood tide, he avoided the fashionable east side of 
the street. By the preference of instinct he invar- 
iably took to the unfashionable, or socalled plebeian 
west side, whose walks are trodden most often by 
the multitudes of women seeking bargains in the 
cheaper class of retail dry-goods houses. 

Like most young men in the heyday of youth and 
life John Lodge was fascinated occasionally by the 
brilliance and beauty of the passing show on the 
east sidewalk. If he chanced to make his way a 
few hundred yards among the ‘^fashionables^’ of the 
feminine world he found himself an object of interest 
to scores of the most distinguished women in the 
throngs of shopping promenaders. 

It could not be rightly said of him that John was 
a flirt, and he certainly had about him nothing at 
all of the arts or practices of the masher. Never in 
his many months of life in Chicago and other large 
cities had he resorted to any ruse or stratagem 
whereby to obtain a chance to accost any of the 


72 


DRIFTING. 


fair maidens or handsome women who, he could 
rightly believe, had given him glances showing ad- 
miration akin to a challenge ; or at least with a 
superlative degree of daring in them. In fact, John 
had never in his life spoken to any beautiful or good- 
looking woman or girl unless after formal presenta- 
tion ; or, when the absolute requirements of busi- 
ness demanded the use of speech. 

He was, perhaps, too shy of the first meeting 
with young women, but once he had embarked with 
any of them in conversation, he was pronounced by 
them the most interesting of masculine companions. 

It was a glorious autumn afternoon only a few 
days after John’s return to the great metropolis on 
Lake Michigan shores. Scarcely a breeze was stir- 
ring; the air was balmy, shop windows were radi- 
ant with the blending colors of the wares exposed 
for sale. No dust or rubbish marred any more the 
beauty of the smooth pavement of asphalt — mer- 
chant princes and a reformed city government had 
done much to solve the problem of beautifying the 
city and keeping it clean. How to improve the con- 
ditions under which the masses of the people 
worked in shops and factories and the. clerical occu- 
pations was a problem about which neither the 
merchants nor the city officials had concerned them- 
selves to any great extent. Through all the years 
of the last quarter of the nineteenth century the 
rich had steadily grown richer; the poor were yet 


DRIFTING. 


73 


poor, if not poorer. It seemed as if the industrial 
conditions in the country were rapidly working out 
a realization of the prophecy of socialist leaders in 
the nineteenth century : That there would soon be 
but two classes of citizens, millionaires and pau- 
pers ; that then at last would be fully aroused the 
so-called class-consciousness of the paupers ; and 
after that — the socialistic millennium. 

Still, as yet the sun shone alike on the ^ rich and 
the poor though nobody could say just how many 
days or weeks or years the sunshine would be 
free, since nobody could tell just when a great uni- 
versal power trust would patent a device for using 
all the sun’s rays to produce heat and power and 
light. Then no more could the sunlight be enjoyed 
except on payment of tribute to this trust octopus 
that no doubt would absorb all the other industrial 
trusts as easily as a whale swallows and ‘"assimilates” 
a minnow. 

It was a fact, however, that the sun was shining 
gorgeously on all the thousands of people who hap- 
pened to be abroad in State street on this particular 
afternoon. It chanced that John Lodge was in the 
street on business. His mission made it necessary 
for him to cross from the west to the east sidewalk 
at Washington street. 

Before him is the most magnificent retail ware- 
house itr the world, its stately portals discharging 
and receiving constant streams of fashionable 


74 


DRIFTING. 


women and maidens, many of whom had arrived in 
carriages, with footmen and coachmen in attend- 
ance. 

Around from Michigan boulevard at the east 
swung an equipage whose resplendant trappings 
John’s keen vision had no difficulty in recognizing 
as entirely familiar. It was not long until the car- 
riage drew nearer, and he at once discovered among 
the occupants of its high-backed, uninclosed seats 
a very pretty girl who, in passing him in street or 
park, in boulevard or other driveway, had never 
failed to meet his hes.itating glances with a straight- 
forward look inexpressibly frank and sweet and in- 
nocent. She seemed scarcely more than a school- 
girl, with glossy, wavy black hair and large brown 
eyes of deeply-tender and most amiable expression. 
One of the two women who were the girl’s com- 
panions gave to the coachman a whispered order 
as the carriage drew closer to the point whence 
John was approaching on the sidewalk. 

It was an order which John had seen or had 
fancied he saw delivered often before. He felt it 
was an order for slower driving and that it was 
given with the sole object of affording the women 
and the gril in the carriage a better opportunity for 
observation of himself — for admiration of himself is 
what he should have thought, but it was seldom 
that John yielded to any promptings of vanity. 

Just at this time, however, he had thought of 


DRIFTING. 


75 


Algona, the maiden from the country and over 
whose probable — nay, almost certain — fate he had 
worried and grieved unceasingly. He had exhausted 
all conceivable efforts to find her, and to aid or 
rescue her, should her fate prove to be what he 
feared it was. Partly because of his sad thoughts 
in reference to Algona, and partly because he al- 
ways felt embarrassed before the combined staring 
from a battery of soft eyes assailing him from van- 
tage ground, John Lodge resolved that 'on this 
occasion he would not even as much as notice the 
exalted personages in the ultra-fashionable driving 
party whose spider phaeton had now almost come to a 
halt on the street at his very side. Instead of ob- 
serving the observers of whom he was the observed, 
he directed a steadfast and unswerving look straight 
ahead, a look which just then fell upon the face 
of — Algona. 

If John could have heard what was said of him 
a moment later by one of the women in the carriage 
he would have been dumfounded. It is probable 
he would also have been indignant, though that 
must be left to conjecture. What was said went 
straight as a barbed arrow to the heart of the girl 
with the raven tresses. Here is the utterance — a 
remark from the disdainful lips of the girl’s mother : 

“Goodness’ sake, what a queer young man for 
you to admire, Leandra dear. How boldly, brazenly 
he accosted that countrified girl! It was so evident 
they had never seen each other before. No doubt 


DRIFTING. 


76 

both are from the country, and perhaps their flirta- 
tion and the unconventional greetings are excusable 
for that reason.’’ 

And the matron and *the others in the carriage, 
except the schoolgirl, who was crestfallen and 
humiliated and almost weeping, tossed their heads 
in a haughty and lofty way, with an air of “I told 
you so.” Then the smart equipage dashed away, 
while John Lodge, with Algona by his side, de- 
parted in the opposite direction. 


DRIFTING. 


77 


CHAPTER IX. 

It did not take John Lodge very long to learn 
that he had committed a grievous error in assum- 
ing that Algona would be entrapped and made a 
prisoneMn the way he had supposed inevitable — or 
in any other way. She had not been entrapped at 
all. To his astonishment and delight he learned 
that she had safely reached the respectable board- 
ing-house to which he had directed her. Pie had 
never thought it necessary to inquire for her there, 
and now he secretly blamed himself for being so 
sure that day that she had been lured away to a 
term of imprisonment in one of the whited sepul- 
chres of Chicago’s vicious districts. 

What he learned in his first few sentences of 
conversation with Algona was enough to convince 
him that she had a narrow escape from the fate he 
feared would have been her portion. By means of 
cautious questioning that did not arouse her sus- 
picions, or give reason for the blush of modesty to 
suffuse her cheeks, he discovered that his surmise 
as to the destination intended for her by the cab- 
man and her pursuer in the buggy had been correct. 
But it turned out that luck and the girl’s own sharp 
wits had thwarted the fiendish plan. 

With considerable animation, but in a perfectly 


DRIFTING. 


78 

delicate and modest way, she now ran over the 
story of her experience after she had parted from 
him. She told how, after a few turns had been 
made by the cab in which she was being hurried 
through the streets that first day in Chicago, a very 
mysterious stop was made by the cabman ; how he 
had alighted from his driver’s seat and entered a 
barroom for a drink — for instructions John 
thought — and how the journey subsequently was 
resumed ; after which the cab came again to a full 
stop, the driver saying: 

“Here we are, Miss.” 

She detailed how, when she was alighting and 
about to step on the sidewalk in front of a fine 
house in a shabby street, she noticed a movement 
of a man’s hand behind a window curtain. She did 
not see the man’s face at first, but she distinctly 
saw in the lapel of his coat a red rose which to her 
fancy seemed the very same blossom she had seen 
a short time before in the beer glass upon the dram- 
shop’s mantelpiece. 

Her suspicions had now been thoroughly aroused 
and she began to question the cabman as to 
whether he was sure that he had brought her to the 
ri ght destination. She searched for the social 
settlement card having in plain print upon it the 
addresses of the boarding-houses of good repute, 
but she was not able to find it. She told how just 
then she had glanced up quickly at the^ house win- 
dow once more. There, beyond all doubt, was the 
face of the very same man who had escorted her 


DRIFTING. 


79 


irom the train and so treacherously led her into the 
drinking grotto. He had grown excited, it would 
seem, over her failure to enter the house at once, and 
she had just caught him making violent gestures of 
impatience and anger at the cabman. 

All the girl’s pluck and resourcefulness must now 
have been aroused. Then and there she resolved 
that she would never be taken into that house alive. 
She ran to the side of a policeman whom she saw 
a few hundred feet away. It must be thlt he had 
some conscience, a rare thing enough among Chi- 
cago policemen. To the girl’s complaint he gave 
quick and sympathetic attention. He took the cab- 
man vigorously to task, searched him and recovered 
the social settlement card ; then told him that he 
ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and 
wound up by threatening to make a report for the 
cancellation of the cab license. 

To another cabman the policeman turned over 
Algona very courteously, and soon she was safe in 
the Michigan avenue boarding-house recommended 
by John himself and marked by him upon the card 
he had given her. 

Precisely as the last details of this narrative were 
being drunk in from Algona’s rosy lips by the 
eager ears of John Lodge, he caught sight once 
more of the spider phaeton and the dashing horses 
driven by the matron who, as we have seen, 
evinced her disappointment at his supposed in- 
formal greeting of Algona on the street some mo- 
ments before. Soft glances were again directed at 


8o 


DRIFTING. 


\ 

him by the debutante at the matron’s side. 

From the same maiden Algona received a quick 
glance betraying jealousy, rage and scorn. It was 
not lost upon her. In that intense look the country 
girl read the very soul of the society bud. 

“Who is that girl in the carriage? She is in love 
with you.” 

Saying this Miss Norwell turned slightly pale. 
So did the girl in the carriage. 

“You astound me, Miss Norwell,” said John. “I 
don’t even know the young lady.” 

“Well she loves you nevertheless.” 

As ,she said this Algona laughed softly. It was 
a silvery little laugh, and proper enough; but John 
thought he detected a predominant note of mockery 
in it. 

“No doubt it is well meant and flattering in you 
to say all that, but please oblige me. Miss Norwell, 
by accepting my word for it when I say that I have 
not the honor of knowing how she could possibly 
be interested in me.” 

Algona now; realized that John’s face wore a 
troubled and appealing look. She quickly changed 
the topic of conversation. 

“Oh, Mr. Lodge,” she exclaimed, almost petu- 
lantly, “what a horrible place this big city is?” 

With a start of interest John replied: 

“It certainly is horrible in some ways; but what 
is the special aspect you refer to?” 

“Ah, well, I had almost forgotten that all your 


DRIFTING. 


8l 


interests must now be here, so I shall say nothing 
against Chicago.” 

“But there are many ways in which so big a city 
may justly be found fault with.” 

“Yes, so I have discovered. For instance, how 
do all the girls in those big retail shops make a 
living? The wages they get cannot be sufficient 
to buy them clothes. They charge $5 a week in a 
boarding-house, but what wages do you suppose I 
have been offered to become a salesgirl '"behind a 
counter in one of these big concerns — the one owned 
by a leading Chicago merchant prince?” 

“I can’t just say,” replied John; “possibly $5 a 
week.” 

“Not quite one-half of it,” she said. 

John was silent. Nothing new was conveyed to 
him in the words of this beautiful country girl. He 
foresaw for her pitfalls innumerable and his soul 
was truly sad. But he had made it a rule not to 
trust himself to speak much of the system under 
which it was possible for the so-called merchant 
princes of the great shops and stores to amass for- 
tunes to be put into the stonemasonry of free 
museums and the endowments for colleges while 
the working people, whose toil made the for- 
tunes possible — and also made them actual — were 
and are denied their just share — robbed of their 
proper pay. He had no patience with these colossal 
wrongs, and his indignation knew no bounds when- 
ever he spoke of them. 

“It must be your intention to remain in this town,” 


82 


DRIFTING. 


he said, falteringly, “if you are looking for employ- 
ment here.” 

“Yes, I must remain here; must get employ- 
ment.” 

She spoke in a low and wavering voice that was 
barely audible above the terrific din of the countless 
noises in the street. Her hesitancy was not lost on 
John. 

He saw that she was deeply agitated by some 
secret emotion. Aye, he plainly discerned the glint 
of suppressed tears in her eyes. He was respect- 
fully silent for the moment. But he felt, as he 
walked along there by her side in the rather 
crowded street, that he was destined to learn her 
secret sorrow ; and that in the event she had suf- 
fered any wrong, he would like to avenge it. Long 
before that short walk was finished he had indeed 
discovered the cause of her secret grief, and for the 
insult that she then explained had been offered to 
her by a prospective employer, John vowed that a 
quick, terrible and exemplary vengeance should and 
would be taken. 


r 


DRIFTING. 



CHAPTER X. 

In days remote, as well as not so remote, the panders 
to the amusements of kings and princes were very 
often the royal ministers of state, officers the very 
highest in the service of throne and crown. 

In the Twentieth Century the powers, if not the at- 
tributes, of the former royal potentates had been 
usurped, at least in America, by the so-called merchant 
princes of the great civic centers of trade and com- 
merce. Instead of flattering panders, known in old 
days as exponents of statescraft, the modern rich mer- 
chants have their hired men to act as panders to the 
consuming weakness that rich employers sometimes 
entertain for all the feminine beauty that chance, re- 
enforced by the stress and poverty of life, throws pell- 
mell behind the counters of that most rapacious de- 
stroyer of woman’s innocence and charm — the modern 
retail shop for the sale of dry goods and general mer- 
chandise in the cities and large towns. 

It has come to be pretty generally known — or at 
least suspected — that many of these commercial cap- 
tains and their scapegrace sons make only a pretense 
of an active business occupation so as the more easily 
to take advantage of the opportunities afforded for 
finding behind counters an array of pretty girls in 
whose ranks nice victims for alluring vices may be 


\ 


84 


DRIFTING. 


found. To these creatures girlish innocence has no 
charm and the virtue of all women, other than their 
sisters and mothers, very often is only a joke. They 
are ever quick to let it be known to prospective femi- 
nine employes of respectability and worth that the 
“labor market” is glutted all the time with salesladies 
2x1 d would-be salesladies. It is not known though that 
these spendthrifts ever find a glut in the supply of 
pretty shopgirls whose especial circumstances of pov- 
erty or training give promise that their debasement 
can at least be attempted with the aid of the allure- 
ments and false prestige that riches bring. 

In one of the largest Chicago houses of the time, 
all or nearly all of the debasing machinery just out- 
lined was in full operation. Here were numbers of 
special “hiring men” whose business it seemed to be 
to make a study of how to feed the egregious vanity 
of a rich man’s depravity by securing for him prac- 
tically a never-ending supply of “rustic amusement” 
— as he was wont to say — from among the bevies of 
fresh country girls constantly seeking and obtaining 
employment with the concern. 

Scarcely a day went by that did not witness in this 
concern’s hiring department the selection of some pros- 
pective victim for the net of the human spider dominat- 
ing the firm. 

Declining fortunes and rapidly waning mercantile 
prestige had marked the history of this vast business 
house for some time. Through favoritism of the mas- 
ter a horde of incompetents had been placed in the 
positions of authority. There was consequent mis- 


DRIFTING. 85 

management and chaos in the handling of details, and 
the great business, built up by a former rugged mer- 
chant, was gradually disintegrating and crumbling in 
the hands of a somewhat degenerate son. Among the 
applicants for a position in this place Algona Norwell 
had registered her name. 

It was her narrative of interviews with the hiring 
men and the proprietor of this concern that had 
brought tears into her eyes and caused John Lodge to 
vow that he would avenge the insult to her. 

Truly it was a most delightful afternoon in State 
street. An aureate sun, just beginning to slant athwart 
the skyscraping buildings, sent down into the busy 
thoroughfare a flood of light and pervasive brilliance. 
Verily it seemed as if all that Chicago had at this time 
evolved in feminine grace and loveliness must be abroad 
in this one thoroughfare just now. In effect the prom- 
enade of shoppers was a beauty show of the most rep- 
resentative kind. It was a display that was gorgeous 
with fashion’s fineries. The feminine aristocracy was 
pouring into the great shopping district from the mati- 
nee ‘^just out” at the annual horse show now drawing 
to a close in the city. Besides, there was in the crowds 
a delicious savor of the beauty unadorned for which 
the maidens in humbler walks of life in America are 
fast becoming famous. It was a relief to Algona to mix 
in the gay throngs crowding on each other’s heels. 
Where all those people could have come from — came 
from — was to her a source of infinite wonder. All 
along these great streets for miles the crowds were as 
closely packed as she had ever seen the emerging 


86 


DRIFTING. 


throngs of worshipers in the aisles and passageways of 
a church in Blue Pigeon any Sunday or holiday in 
her recollection. 

Gradually she became infected with the contagion 
of the silvery, rippling laughter of girls all around 
her in this fine day’s parade of Chicago’s hosts of 
women shoppers. She thought it strange that so many 
of the most beautiful women were abroad all alone in 
the gay whirl of the human tide. 

But what seemed especially strange to her was that 
nearly all the women, whether in groups or alone, were 
apparently ever ready to smile sweetly, or at least look 
interestedly, at John Lodge. Now, she knew that John 
was not by any means conspicuously handsome. Be- 
sides, she saw very many really handsomer men in the 
passing throngs. 

*‘Oh, it is his strikingly honest face that attracts 
them,” she thought. 

For the first time in weeks she was cheerful. Her 
spirits were buoyant She began to feel very proud 
of her escort His frank and simple courtesy she found 
to be very agreeable. Her pride, which had been 
piqued, if not wounded outright, by the former indif- 
ference of John’s manner she now felt was placated. 

She was talking interestedly about many things and 
seemed in no hurry to dispense with her escort 

For his part John realized that his fair companion, 
despite the lack of showiness in her dress and man- 
ners, was by far the most beautiful creature in the 
whole promenade. Still he was not interested senti- 


DRIFTING. 87 

mentally in the girl — he would not permit himself to 
be interested in that way. 

He had certain plans and aims which, quite early in 
his Chicago career, had caused him to form a resolu- 
tion to keep clear of Cupid’s entanglements for years 
to come. 

But despite his philosophy on this subject he felt 
a very friendly interest in the girl now by his side. 
Moreover he thoroughly abhorred the numerous “hir- 
ing men” and employers who have the shameless ef- 
frontery to lay snares for such sweet innocence. So 
the purpose to ascertain without delay how her insulter 
might appropriately be unmasked and punished be- 
came an over-mastering desire with him. Hence he 
purposely led her footsteps to the very doors of 
Beverly & Co. 

Before she was aware of her proximity to that em- 
porium John remarked: 

“Ah, this is Beverly’s, the place where you have 
been seeking employment.” 

“Why, yes, sure enough it is the place,” replied 
the girl. “And, now that I am here, it is just as well 
for me to learn the final answer of that horrid hiring 
man who took down my application in his own hand- 
writing.” 

“What part of the store is he to be found in?” 
queried John. 

“On the third floor,” she answered. “It would take 
only a few minutes to run up there.” 

“He may repeat his insulting talk.” 


88 


DRIFTING. 


“But I will not enter his private office at all ; I can 
have the office boy find out my fate and let me know.” 

She paused a moment. Then laying a pretty finger- 
tip on John’s arm she remarked, with obvious embar- 
rassment : 

“Would it inconvenience you to wait for me?” 

“It will give me pleasure to accompany you to the 
office door,” said John, in a voice that he steadied with 
difficulty. 

“Oh, I thank you very much,” said Algona. “I 
am sure I shall feel relieved to have you near me.” 

In a moment they were in an ascending elevator 
car packed closely with a dozen other passengers. 
They were soon at the outer door of the hiring 
man’s office. Even here no halt or hesitancy was 
apparent in John’s footsteps or manner. He seemed 
about to enter with Algona, but she stopped him, 
saying : 

“Isn’t it better that you stay here, as I will not 
remain more than a second or two? I will not meet 
the man himself; only his assistant or the office 
boy.” 

“As you please. Miss Norwell,” replied John, “I 
am at your service and you have but to command 
me.” 

True to her word she was away only a moment, 
though John thought it was an age. But when she 
emerged she was not alone. A tall and extremely 
cadaverous man, whom John happened to know to 
be the chief proprietor of the concern, was by her 


DRIFTING. 


89 


side, talking to her earnestly. They stood in a little 
nook just outside the office door. Though the girl 
seemed at first a good deal frightened, still John 
very quickly noticed that her gaze was fixed on the 
big diamond that the man wore in his shirt front. 
Out of a feeling of delicacy, lest Miss Norwell should 
think him intruding, John did not approach nearer ; 
but, still, he was only a few feet away. 

Almost directly behind the merchant’s back, John 
was in a position to remain easily unobserved. But 
he could not avoid hearing the conversation, if such 
it could be called. 

What he heard brought the light of indignation 
into his honest eyes and the strength of Hercules 
into his quivering muscles. It was as base a propo- 
sition as ever was made to an unsophisticated school- 
girl, even in Chicago. It ran about as follows, ex- 
cept that certain suggestive words and phrases used 
by the merchant are omitted. 

Said this man : 

“You see, pretty fairy, it is a good deal like I 
told you the other day when my hired official brought 
your interesting case to my attention. Just now 
there is a great oversupply of shopgirls; but the 
supply of beauty like yours is always limited. It 
is a fixed rule here that the highest wages my hir- 
ing men can allow for green shopgirls is $2.25 a 
week. It would be impossible for you to live on that 
small sum; in fact, we would not think of hiring 
you if we knew you would try to live on it. But 


90 


DRIFTING. 


you say you have no home. So you ought to be free 
to have a discreet gentleman friend who would back 
you — help you financially. There are many such 
men of means who would deem it a favor to be 
allowed to supply you with lots of money in return 
for the excellent companionship that so beautiful 
a girl must be capable of giving, even while main- 
taining an unassailable good name in one of the de- 
partments where we have use for inexperienced 
shopgirls. 

‘‘Have you given consideration to my offer to help 
you personally in this friendly way? I know it was 
a bit abrupt in me to make the offer, but I feel, from 
what I have learned of your case, that you must soon 
make up your mind, unless you want to starve. 

“I cannot think that it must come to that. But 
my attitude, you know, would be only sympathetic 
friendship — perhaps Platonic friendship, pure and 
simple. What do you think of it all?” 

“Oh, please, sir, don’t speak such things. I can’t, 
no, I can’t believe you mean anything wrong, but 
I, but I ” 

She spoke in a bewildered way, as if half beside 
herself. Or was she resourceless, penniless, and 
therefore listening to the tempter? 

Had she forgotten John’s presence and his prom- 
ise to be at her command? 

But John could stand it no longer. Boldly inter- 
rupting the conversation he addressed the astonished 
merchant in quick, intense sentences, as follows: 


DRIFTING. 


91 


“Sir, you are torturing, persecuting, insulting this 
* innocent girl and plotting her ruin, and — and you are 
a brute, sir/^ 

“How dare you insult me in my own store, sir — “ 
“How dare you,” interrupted John. 

And the next moment a brawny fist had shot like 
a dynamite projectile to the merchant’s chin and sent 
him sprawling to the floor, where he kicked about 
and writhed in spasms of agony. n 

Instantly Algona recovered her self . possession. 
It seemed that the evil spell upon her had been 
broken with the tempter’s inglorious fall. Her face 
actually was wreathed in smiles as she departed 
leaning on John’s arm. Their escape was easily 
effected. It chanced that nobody except Algona 
had witnessed the encounter, and she and John 
Lodge relentlessly abandoned the discomfited mer- 
chant to his fate. 


92 


DRIFTING. 


CHAPTER XL 

Private policemen known as house detectives saw 
John Lodge come with an excited young woman 
from the vicinity of the spot where the head of the 
firm was found unconscious that afternoon. In- 
stantly the hirelings reached the conclusion that 
their master’s assailant was this same young man. 
Though they failed to intercept him at the time, it 
did not take them long to get a clew as to his 
identity. 

Why it did not take them long was not because 
of any special acumen on their part, but for the 
simple reason that John, as he came down in the 
elevator with Algona from the third floor, took one 
of his business cards from his pocketbook and handed 
it to the elevator conductor, accompanying the act 
with a verbal message as follows : 

Tell the chief of your house detectives that I 
am the person who has left my compliments with 
Mr. Beverly on the third floor, and that I can be 
round any time at the office of the newspaper on 
which I am employed. My name is John Lodge. 
It is the name on that card. My address as there 
given is my business address, but you may tell the 
detective that I am ready to meet him, or a representa- 


DRIFTING. 93 

tive of this firm anywhere. Please don’t forget this 
and I will feel obliged.” 

He did not forget. His mental activity had been 
stimulated by a piece of money slipped into his palm 
by John. 

Card and message were duly delivered, but not 
before the detective forces of the house had been 
thrown into a perturbation over the discovery that 
the firm’s chief had been boldly attacked and badly 
beaten by a young man assumed to be a robber. 

“What audacity?” muttered Chief Detective 
Hardy, after the visit of the elevator conductor. 
“This message is a trick to get us to disclose to the 
newspapers the story of the dastardly assault. But 
it won’t work. This firm has dealt with newspapers 
before. 

“His name — John Lodge. Of course, that’s not 
the fellow’s name at all. It’s much too good a name 
for a cutthroat. Let’s see what the newspaper has 
to say to it?” 

Through the telephone Detective Hardy quickly 
ascertained it was true that the paper had on its 
staff then a young man named John Lodge, but the 
editor spoke of him as peaceable and exemplary 
in every way. 

“He is every inch a scholar and a gentleman — 
one of the most highly esteemed young men on this 
paper, or in the newspaper business,” was the esti- 
mate of John Lodge transmitted over the wire from 
the editorial sanctum. 


94 


DRIFTING. 


‘'Glad to hear it/' said Hardy. “Could you send 
him over here at once? He is wanted here just 
now on private business of greatest importance.” 

“That is impossible, I am sorry to say,” responded 
the editor. “He will not be here until 5 o’clock, 
and it is not quite 4 yet.” 

“Couldn’t you reach him any way at all?” 

“No, there is no way.” 

“Well, then, please have him come over the mo- 
ment he arri — .” 

“But, say,” interrupted the editor, laughing loudly 
on the wire, “I will tell you what I can do at once — 
I will send you his picture if he is suspected of shop- 
lifting.” 

“Well, that will do even better than himself,” said 
Hardy, “so we will be obliged if you will send it 
over here immediately.” 

“But, surely you have no charge against him ; it 
is simply absurd to think he could be guilty of any 
offense.” 

“We will talk about that later on,” replied the 
detective. “For the present I want to say once more 
that the members of this firm would deem it a great 
favor if you will send over the picture without a 
moment’s delay. We are the friends of your paper 
and of all the papers, and a favor of this sort is 
something we have a right to expect.” 

“Certainly, your firm is the paper’s friend,” said 
the editor, “and I will at once send the photograph, 
do with it what you will.” 


DRIFTING. 


95 


So the picture of John Lodge was “sent over at 
once” to the manager of a firm that was then the 
largest advertiser in the world. It took the elevator 
boy only a glance to recognize the photograph 
shown to him by the detective as the likeness of the 
young man who gave the message and card in the 
elevator but whom the boy informant did not know 
to be suspected of assault on the head of the firm, 
the said assault having been kept a secret from all ex- 
cept a very few of the three thousand employes of 
the great retail concern. 


96 


DRIFTING. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

CHAPTER XII. 

When John Lodge reached the newspaper office 
at 5 o’clock that afternoon he found two letters 
awaiting him. One had come in the regular way 
through the mails. But the other missive bore no 
postmark or stamp, and he noticed that it was ad- 
dressed in the familiar hand-writing of his immediate 
superior in the paper’s service, the city editor. Such 
handwriting, on a sealed communication, was omi- 
nous, especially when, as in the present instance, the 
city editor was sitting in full view of John Lodge 
himself — within twenty feet of the letter-rack beside 
which John was now standing. 

It was no surprise to get such a letter at this time. 
Without a tremor he tore open the envelope. It re- 
quired only a glance for him to become aware that 
the communication was a letter of dismissal. It 
read: 

Mr. Lodge: 

Your services are tio longer needed on this paper. Your 
dismissal takes effect forthwith. Your pay is in the cashier’s 
hand. 

Basil T. Cowley, City Editor. 

No formal explanation of the dismissal was vouch- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 97 

safed by the city editor. Perhaps none was thought 
necessary. 

With true dignity and yet in a cordial way the dis- 
missed writer stepped to the desk at which the 
editor — a sweet-tempered and most kindly but quite 
unesthetic-appearing man — was seated. 

To John it seemed that the editor never looked so 
benignant and pleasant as at this moment. 

‘‘Good-bye, Mr. Cowley,” said John. “Believe me, 
I shall not soon forget your kindneses to me while 
it was my pleasure and privilege to serve on this 
paper.” 

“Good-bye, Lodge, old friend, and good luck to 
you,” said the editor, warmly grasping John’s prof- 
fered hand. “I am very sorry to lose you, but you 
understand what the power of a great advertiser is 
when he or his firm demands a sacrifice in a news- 
paper office nowadays. I want to say to you, sub 
rosa of course, that secretly I have more admiration 
for you than ever before; and that, unless fate is un- 
kind, you will yet cause a stir that should result in 
great good in the world. So keep up your courage 
and go ahead on the right path.” 

After a pause for a diplomatic little cough and a 
furtive glance around to see that nobody was listening, 
the editor continued : 

“It may be necessary and I think it certainly would 
be wise for you to quit Chicago and remain away 
for some time, unless you possess an independent 
fortune of considerable magnitude. Now, that re- 


98 THE SWORD OF TPIE ADVERTISER. 

minds me of a certain matter I have heard. It has 
been common gossip that you have a comfortable 
fortune. But if that talk is false, or you need any 
money for one thing and another, it would be a 
pleasure to me to let you have the use of the little 
fund I have succeeded in laying by for a rainy day, 
such as this seems now to be for you.’’ 

All this time the editor had held John’s hand 
clasped firmly in his own, while John stood there 
silent and abstracted, pale and thoughtful, but by 
no means a picture of despair. His emotions were 
deeply stirred by the sympathetic words and the 
practical evidence of good-will he now received from 
this man at whose hands he had never before re- 
ceived any special evidence or demonstration of 
friendship. 

'Thanks for your kindness in making so generous 
an offer, but I assure you, Mr. Cowley, I am in no 
immediate need of anything that money can buy,” 
replied the discharged writer. 

“Well, at any rate, you know what a genuine ad- 
miration I have for pluck and manliness and brav- 
ery; and I will ever deem it a rare honor to have 
a warm handshake with you whenever your muscular 
arm punishes a scoundrel, be that scoundrel a mil- 
lionaire or a pauper.” 

“Thanks, once more. Say good-bye for me to 
all members of your staff,” said John, evincing much 
feeling. “As for yourself, Mr. Cowley, your kindness 
overwhelms me, and it shall never be forgotten.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


99 


With that John Lodge left the office and the build- 
ing, taking with him the good wishes of all who knew 
him and were aware of his enforced severance of con- 
nection with a publication that his writings had 
adorned. 






LofC. 


lOO 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTETR XIII. 

When John reached the street he bethought him 
of the second letter. He had not opened it. Just 
as he was taking it from one of his pockets to scan 
its contents he was hailed by Dr. Barrett. 

“How is my young friend, and why have I not 
seen you at my office?” said the physician, taking 
John by the arm, gently but only momentarily, and 
in truly courteous fashion. 

“Well, to tell nothing but the exact truth, doc- 
tor, I was just now on the way to see you.” 

“In that case I am delighted and shall be most 
thankful for the chance to have a visit with you.” 

“Now doctor, don’t banter me too much. I have 
been very busy getting back into the newspaper 
harness.” 

“If being in the harness keeps you from seeing your 
friends, then a plague upon the harness.” 

“It is plague infected,” replied John, “and, what is 
worse, it seems to communicate its plague to all the 
world.” 

“Let me whisper a word in your ear on that subject, 
friend John. Don’t you think it would be a mistake 
at present to give people the impression that you have 
become monomaniac on that question of the popular 
unrepresentativeness of modern newspapers?” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


lOI 


‘‘Doctor, the burning thoughts of my soul on that 
topic have never been spoken to anybody but you,” 

“Oh, then, please pardon me,” said the physician, 
quickly. “The simple truth is I have been deeply con- 
cerned for your welfare. You must be aware, of course, 
that the newspaper publishers are popularly supposed 
to be in a sort of trust ?” 

“Yes, the most sinister and dastardly trust in all 
the world — a trust that history may yet write down 
as the most oppressive, shameless and infamous of the 
monopolies.” 

With such intensity did John utter the last sentence, 
the physician’s fine face assumed a sort of frightened, 
worried look. 

Then he spoke slowly and deliberately as follows : 

“Now, my dear friend, I beg you not to judge too 
hastily. That is often the fault of honest young blood 
which is stirred to the boiling point of indignation at 
the discovery that all in the world is not justice, honor, 
fair-play and integrity. Besides the very worldly 
people will be quick to remember that you appear to 
be accepting some bread and butter from a newspaper 
publisher. So it may be the part of prudence to do very 
little talking against the newspaper business, so long 
as you make a living at it. Nay, perhaps some people 
would even go so far as to say that professonal pride 
and etiquette ought to be motives sufficient to command 
silence in reference to things that go wrong in a busi- 
ness which no one man’s efforts can set right in an 
instant.” 

“Dr. Barrett, I thought you were my friend and to 


102 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


you of all people in the world I looked for sympathy, 
but you appear to misunderstand me utterly ” 

^‘No, my boy, I do not misunderstand you,” the doc- 
tor replied, quite calmly “What is more, I not only 
sympathize with all your views, but personally I en- 
dorse them — share them with you. Still, I fancy the 
time has not come for you or me, or other ordinary 
mortal, to undertake the Herculean work of reforming 
the press so that it would truly stand for and voice 
demands for the public good, instead of being what 
now it seems to be — the greatest, meanest, cruelest of 
all agencies for the oppression of the wage-earning 
masses and the denial to them of their just and proper 
and reasonable share from the profits of every indus- 
trial enterprise.” 

“Ah, now you are talking like your old self,” said 
John, with unrestrained enthusiasm. 

“Yes, my dear friend, but you must not forget that 
it may be all right for me to say those things, while 
it may not be at all wise for you to say them, so long 
as you remain in the newspaper business.” 

“But I am not in the business ; I am as untrammeled 
in that respect as you are.” 

“Ah, then I have missed the point I wished to make 
and must beg your forgiveness,” said the physician, 
in some confusion. “But I have heard you were again 

on the staflf of The ; and besides, I understood 

you to say something a while ago about having got 
back into harness.” 

“That is all true enough, doctor; hut it’s also true 
that I am not in the harness just now.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. IO3 

‘‘But you won’t quit for good, will you?” 

‘’Well, that’s somewhat problematical.” 

“You are at leisure then,” said the doctor, “and you 
must let me see more of you. Run up any time to my 
office here in the Memorial Building. Drop in tomor- 
row. But stay, let me see. You were now on the way 
to see me?” 

“Yes, doctor, I was.” 

After a brief pause the physician said : 

“I gave an order for an automobile to be sent around 
here about this time. Ah, here it is. Come, jump in 
with me for a spin on the south side boulevards. I 
am going on a professional call to Prairie Avenue.” 

No excuses that John had to offer would now be 
accepted. He was soon in the auto, seated beside the 
doctor, who, being himself an expert chauffeur, had 
dismissed the hostler. 

In another moment the doctor and John Lodge were 
speeding at a rapid rate down Michigan Avenue 
southward. 

As they approached Jackson boulevard John’s keen 
vision recognized a splendid equipage that came from 
the west and turned south on Michigan avenue. It re- 
quired only a second for the automobile under the doc- 
tor’s deft handling, to reach the side of the carriage 
drawn by the magnificent pair of high-stepping road- 
ster horses and in which, with the others in the party, 
sat the fair girl whose glances had attracted John’s 
notice as he accosted Algona on State Street a few 
hours before. Her mother, or the lady whom John 
had always assumed to be her mother, was “the whip.” 


104 the sword of the advertiser. 

Fast though the doctor was speeding he recognized 
and saluted the party in the carriage. 

'‘That’s Mrs Verrazano Beverly with her daughter 
and, I suppose, some visiting friend whom I have not 
met,” said the doctor. "Oh, my, but these horseless 
vehicles that we call automobiles are dreadful trouble- 
makers in the social sphere; they go so fast that the 
most expert automobilists sometimes don’t get a chance 
to recognize or salute their best friends. Still, I sup- 
pose these machines are handy if one wants to ‘cut’ a 
social acquaintance.” 

They are also very handy as aids for the conceal- 
ment of emotions aroused in a chauffeur’s companion 
or companions by any chance surprise. In the whir 
and din of the scurrying autocar little chance is af- 
forded to the driver to observe the distressing effect of 
any startling thing that a companion may have heard 
or seen. 

So it was on this occasion. Dr. Barrett did not 
notice how John started and turned pale, then blushed 
furiously, after hearing the names of the party in the 
carriage. 

So agitated was he on discovering that the young 
lady interested in him is the daughter of the man he 
had that day chastised, he strove memontarily to con- 
ceal his confusion by the justifiable ruse of seeming 
to be busy with some absorbing thought — or the un- 
read letter. 

"How did you come to quit the paper?” queried 
the doctor. 

But, scarcely was any ruse for silence necessary 


THE S'A'ORD OF THE ADVERTISER. IO5 

on John’s part, as the doctor had already sped the auto- 
mobile over the few miles of roadway to the destina- 
tion on Prairie Avenue. He halted the machine in 
front of a magnificent brown-stone mansion. Alight- 
ing briskly he said : 

‘AVe will talk later about your affairs which are 
always interesting to me.” 

“Why, doctor, I don’t mind telling you at once,” said 
John, “that a big advertiser, who I believe lives in one 
of the mansions of the millionaires’ colony about us 
here, has procured my dismissal ; demanded it and of 
course was accommodated instantly by the publisher 
of the paper.” 

“Aha, is that so?” 

“Yes, I have felt the power of the rich advertiser’s 
mailed hand and cloven foot.” 

“Too bad, poor boy.” 

“’Tis a long story, but I will tell you much about 
it when your professional matter is attended to.” 

“Very well ; but you must not worry about the mat- 
ter, anyway.” 

“Thanks for your kind sympathy, doctor. No, I 
will not worry.” 

“Why not come in here with me ; the automobile will 
be safe enough and, as my friend, you will be wel- 
come to wait in the drawing room while I am with 
the patient.” 

John evaded the question. He wished to gain time 
to collect his thoughts. Just then he again remem- 
bered the unread letter, yet unopened in his pocket. 
To decide that he would at last use it as a justifiable 


io6 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


ruse to gain time for reflection was for John only the 
occupation of a moment. 

“I should prefer to await you here/’ said John, with 
much feeling. “1 have an unopened letter here in my 
pocket, and I shall take this chance to read it. Besides, 
doctor, it always makes me sad to enter the mansions 
of the very rich; as I cannot help contrasting in my 
mind the extravagant luxuries of such places with the 
squalor and misery of tenements in the ghetto — tene- 
ments in which are stabled the thousands of poor 
people to whom a millionaire nowadays presents, not 
the just share of the bread they have earned but a 
collection of stuffed mummies or other curios in a 
big museum on a public place. Methinks the people 
are the mummies, except that they are unstuffed either 
with sawdust or food.” 

“Hush, hush/’ said the doctor, smiling in a depre- 
cating way and waving a temporary adieu to John in 
the automobile. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


107 


CHAPTER XIV. 

.. Precisely at the moment that the door of the man- 
sion shut upon the doctor’s disappearing figure John 
Lodge began to scan for the first time the contents of 
the second letter. 

In the letter was news of the most extraordinary 
sort — news that would have caused most people in 
John’s position to be simply beside themselves with 
joy. But it failed to stir John’s emotions save in a 
casual and very ordinary way. In fact it would have 
brought him more sorrow than joy, except for one 
circumstance — the gratification of his ambition to have 
sufficient resources for carrying out certain cherished 
reforms for the benefit of humanity and the progress 
of true civilization. 

Here is the letter he now was reading: 

ALFRED OSBORNE & SON, 

Attorneys & Counselors. 

Marquette Building, 

Chicago. 

Oct 

Mr. John Lodge. 

Dear Sir: — In reference to the estate of your uncle, Don 
Alonzo Lodge, concerning which we have been in communi- 
cation with you in the past, we are pleased to be able to say 
that it will not now be necessary for you to take the trip to 
Brazil, unless you would prefer that course. 


io8 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Through the good ofhces of the Brazilian government, 
which feels especially friendly to you on account of the great 
public services of your uncle in that country, it has been un- 
expectedly easy for us to arrange all details for the imme- 
diate acquisition by you of your relative’s fortune. 

A particularly pleasant feature oi the negotiations is that 
the amount of the inheritance bequeathed to you under the 
will of your uncle is enormous. It is not less than $70,- 
000,000 and possibly may reach $90,000,000 or even $100,- 
000,000. 

It appears that your lamented uncle had formed a plan to 
dispose of all his interests in the great South American 
country and retire to spend his declining years in this, his 
native land. For years he had been investing heavily in all 
the gilt-edged securities of this republic, and more than half 
of his vast holdings are now among the safest investments our. 
great nation can boast of. 

All that yet remains for you to do is to execute some 
legal papers before the Brazilian Consul-General in this 
city. Then the entire vast fortune of your uncle will be 
yours. So we want you at once to name some day this 
week for this necessary business meeting with the consul. 

Please let us know in advance the day and hour most 
convenient for you. We will take pleasure in arranging the 
appointment with the Consul-General, a. good and most 
genial man, who was a personal friend of your father and 
your uncle — “the Lodge boys,” as he calls them — and of 
whose wonderful feats in Brazilian financiering he loves to 
talk for hours together. 

We have the honor to tender you our heartfelt congratu- 
lations for your great good luck. 

We remain, 

Sincerely yours, 

Alfred Osborne & Son. 

Just as he finished reading and had begun wonder- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I09 

ing why all this money should come to him, while 
millions of deserving and needy men, women and 
children were in want, something hit the letter, which 
he still held open in his hands, and tore or bored a 
clean-cut hole through it. Instantly another flying 
missile whizzed through the air close to John’s ears. 
Then came another and still others, until John would 
have been exceedingly dull if he had not become aware 
that he was being shot at — especially as the whizzing 
flight of each missile was accompanied by a report that 
was unmistakably the sharp crack of a shot-gun or 
rifle. 

He looked toward the mansion which the doctor had 
entered, as that was the direction whence the sounds 
came. There at an open window behind a massive 
facade on the first story, he saw the crouching figure 
of a man whose face he recognized at a glance. It was 
the face of the merchant whom he had chastised and 
left stunned and comatose in the down-town emporium 
early that afternoon. 

In the man’s hands is a rifle which John knew would 
now be smoking at the muzzle, except for the use of 
smokeless powder in its shells ; and — yes, beyond ques- 
tion that is Dr. Barrett struggling to disarm the mer- 
chant. 

It was only a moment of struggle and strife between 
the grappling men until both disappeared from John’s 
view. 

Nothing further was now seen or heard by him in 
that quarter, and he surmised that the doctor’s effort 
for disarmment had been successful. 


no 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Because of the tension of the moment and the noise 
of the barking rifle John had not heeded the approach 
of a carriage behind him. A glance to the rear was 
enough to reveal the identity of the vehicle. It was 
the carriage of the Beverlys with the whole party yet 
together. 

Hia eyes met Miss Beverly’s, as usual, at the first 
onset. She was pale and had a frightened look, as 
if she divined that something was going wrong some- 
where, and that John was involved in the mishap. 

Just at this time John looked again at the mansion 
from which the shots had come, and more especially 
at the window inside which he had seen merchant 
and doctor in a struggle. So quickly were things hap- 
pening that John had no time for thought as to what 
he should do. 

But still another glance at the fateful window con- 
vinced him that the struggle between the physician and 
the millionaire was yet in progress. He jumped from 
the automobile, intending to run to the house and 
notify the servants and attendants that a silent con- 
test, of dangerous import, was under way between Dr. 
Barrett and one who seemed a madman. Forgetting, 
or not caring that the eyes of all in the carriage were 
upon him, he started on a quick run up the broad walk 
leading to the massive portals of the great house. 
Again he noticed the figure of the merchant at the 
window, distant, as the bee flies, not more than one 
hundred feet. Once again the rifle spoke. Instinctively 
John bent his head, and as if dodging the bullets, real 
or imaginary, he swerved somewhat in his course. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Ill 


A piercing scream in the street behind him caused 
John to stop and turn about in his tracks. What he 
saw gave him greater concern than he had yet felt in 
this trying situation. A woman’s figure which he 
recognized as Miss Beverly, was swaying about in the 
carriage. She was limp and helpless, and would have 
fallen into the street only that the footman adroitly 
saved her. It was manifest that she either was shot, 
or had fainted. 

She was now in the arms of her mother who had 
dropped the horses’ bridle-reins to aid and caress her 
stricken child. In the commotion the carriage steeds 
took fright and became runaways. 

It was in vain that the footman grasped the reins. 
Before his hold had been firmly established the excited 
animals were dashing wildly along the beautiful resi- 
dence thoroughfare. 

A few more strides of the flying steeds and the phae- 
ton, with its terror-stricken occupants, would have 
been whirled away to death or disaster. 

. With the fleetness of an antelope, John now ran 
straight for the runaways. But he saw he was too 
late to head them off. He called encouragingly to the 
frightened women to “Hold on”; and he continued 
his footrace. Quickly he formed a resolution to out- 
run these horses, speeding with all their might. He 
did outrun them, gaining ground on the equipage stride 
after stride. 

In a flying leap that has never been surpassed by 
the performance of equestrian or circus athletes any- 
where in the world, John Lodge now arose from the 


II2 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Street pavement and landed safely in the phaeton just 
beside where the coachman stood. John’s footing was 
lucky and sure. He missed not the foot-board ; stum- 
bled not when he reached it. With deft and practiced 
strength, developed to good purpose on college campus 
and football field, he swung himself into a position that 
gave him a hand on the reins just as the struggling 
coachman sank into a seat, exhausted. Using his left 
hand to support the prostrate young woman, John 
Lodge with his right hand tugged steadily and strongly 
on the bridles of the runaways. So tremendous was 
his musclar prowess, the scurrying steeds could not 
stand the pressure. The bridle bits they let go from 
between their teeth ; and in the next instant they were 
halted, panting and tame. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


II3 


CHAPTER XV. 

Just at this moment Miss Beverly^s eyes opened 
full upon John. In them he read a speechless message 
of tenderest gratitude. 

*‘We owe our lives to your bravery/’ she mur- 
mured softly, ‘‘how can we ever thank you suffi- 
ciently ?” 

“It is a pleasure to be of service to ladies at any 
time,” said John with spirit, “and the service is its 
own reward.” 

“It is nice of you to say so— -yes, nice and kind 
and good — and I hope you are not hurt yourself.” 

“Yes, we’re all very grateful to you indeed, sir — 
as my daughter says, very grateful, sir,” said Mrs. 
Beverly, somewhat snappishly. “And now that it’s 
all over some of us will want doctors for our nerves 
and explanations for ” 

Hesitation possessed Mrs. Beverly and the third 
woman in the party — a vivacious little person in the 
class of “the fascinating old maids” — filled in the 
hiatus as follows: 

“Yes, explanations as to how it all occurred; it 
was so perfectly dreadful.” 

“Ah, here comes Dr. Barrett; he knows all,” said 
John. 


1 14 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

In the automobile the doctor was speeding to aid 
the ladies involved in the runaway affair. He soon 
halted, his horseless vehicle beside the Beverly car- 
riage, from which all the ocupants had now alighted. 

‘'Oh, doctor, I fear that something dreadful has 
occurred in our house,^’ said Mrs. Beverly. “Who 
fired those shots from the facade window of Mr. 
Beverly’s bedroom? They frightened my daughter 
almost to death; and at first I thought she was shot.” 

“Why, Mrs. Beverly, there was no shooting of 
anybody intended,” replied the doctor, with suave 
self-possession. “Mr. Beverly had a slight brush 
this afternoon with holdup men. They failed to in- 
jure or rob him, however, and he came home and 
began some rifle practice by shooting in the air, his 
object being to be prepared to deal adequately with 
holdup men in the future.” 

“Oh, was that all ?” said Mrs. Beverly. “Of course 
it is dreadful to be held up. But how absurd in Mr. 
Beverly to shoot a rifle around here in that way, 
frightening his neighbors and even his own family.” 

“It is perhaps to be excused in him, as quite nat- 
urally he was much excited by his experience,” 
averred the physician. 

“Indeed, that is so,” said Leandra. “But is papa 
well, doctor — is he well? Is his mind all right? I 
thought I saw him aiming the shots into the street, 
and it was that which frightened me the most of all.” 

In the girl’s voice was a note of intensity that the 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. II5 

physician was quick to detect. He assured her that 
no fears need be entertained for the paternal mind. 

“It seems to me a great crowd is sure to gather here 
in a few moments,” said the doctor. “So the best 
thing for all you ladies to do is to step aboard this 
- automobile and let me take you to your home.” 

“Don’t have us go without your friend, who saved 
all our lives in such a heroic way,” said Miss Beverly 
in a whisper to the doctor. “We haven’t thanked him 
enough at all. Please have him come with us.” 

Since his arrival on the scene the doctor had not 
met John’s gaze, seeming to avoid it. As for John, it 
is hardly necessary to say that he was the most in- 
tensely interested of all in what the doctor had been 
saying, and he stood aloof in the background, silent 
but doing a great deal of thinking. Now, the physi- 
cian at last bent his gaze upon the late rescuer of this 
interesting party. It was a lingering and significant 
glance that was exchanged by the two friends. Then 
Dr. Barrett said : 

“No, with all respect for Miss Beverly’s wishes, it 
is best that Mr. Lodge stay away from your house 
while your father’s nerves are unstrung. You see, 
most holdup men are strong, muscular-looking persons 
like Mr. Lodge and Mr. Beverly might make the 
lamentable blunder of mistaking Mr. Lodge for one 
of the holdup men who attacked him today at the 
door of his business office. Indeed I fear that Mr. 
Beverly already has made the mistake of taking Mr. 
Lodge for one of his assailants, but of course that^ 


Il6 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

is a hallucination and will pass away and be for- 
gotten.” 

John smiled knowingly. Clever family physician 
is this Dr. Barrett, he thought. How nicely he had ex- 
plained away the episodes of the shooting and the 
assault, though of course it is probable he has been 
misled by Beverly, or left as much in the dark as was 
possible. 

Yes, John was lost in admiration of the doctor’s tact 
in putting the best face possible upon unpleasant mat- 
ters. 

“Oh, this is terrible,” murmured Miss Beverly. 
“But papa will not be always in that excited mood, 
and you must bring your friend to see us, doctor ; and 
Mr. Lodge, you must come, will come soon, as we 
would be pleased and delighted to have you call.” 

With truest chivalry John bowed his thanks, but 
before he had time to return any other reply than his 
smiles, Mrs. Beverly — after a brief colloquy with the 
doctor — gave an order to the coachman to drive Mr. 
Lodge to his residence, or his hotel. 

Then, as she was assisted into the automobile, by 
the doctor, she said in somewhat lachrymose voice: 

“Oh, my beautiful bays are now ruined. They will 
always be liable to become runaways again at any mo- 
ment. They must now be sold — gotten rid of at any 
price. Too bad, too bad, as we all loved them so dearly. 
If they should try to run away when hauling Mr. 
Lodge it would be useless. But it may do them good 
to be checked and made tame once more by him, should 
they run away again so soon.” 


TPIE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. II7 

They were now speeding away in the automobile — 
the three women and the physician. 

^‘Doctor, you must tell us all about that young man ; 
he is certainly most interesting.” 

Again the speaker , was Mrs. Beverly. 

“Indeed, you must tell us all about him, he is such 
a noble and courageous young man,” Miss Beverly 
added. 

“Leandra, you talk so silly,” snapped the mother. 
“It is time you had a little sense.” 

“Here we are at your porte cochere,” said the doc- 
tor, pretending not to hear the reproof administered 
to Leandra. 

As the auto party alighted they were still in full 
view of John who was then being driven from the 
place where he stopped the runaways a few blocks 
away. To him the doctor waved an adieu with his 
handkerchief. So did Leandra behind her mother’s 
back. 


ii8 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Bygone days are always in memory the “best” to 
those who already have seen their palmiest young- 
blood hours. That seems in a sense a sort of truism. 
Yet its truth is oft forgotten quite. Perhaps it is just 
as well that way. Were it otherwise very few of those 
good people, the fruit of whose best days is the ripe 
wisdom of age and experience, would be willing to 
pay tribute to the times gone by What would then 
become of history and folk-lore and the many other 
well-digested delights of gossip and chatter? Besides, 
would not the heroes and heroines of poetry and song 
and story be undone quite thoroughly? No memories 
of shrines or gods — nothing to venerate or worship ! 
It would be to make memory a tabula rasa — an erase- 
ment of the sweetest remembrance of human lives. 
But there is no danger that it ever will come to that. 
Bygone events cast their shadows behind. 

With Miss Sophonisba Beverly no times were quite 
like the old times. She was in her prime sometime be- 
fore the palmy days of the World’s Fair of 1893. 

It was not more than a decade or so since the great 
Fair, yet in that short time the world retrograded in 
all things great and good and wise and esthetic. What 
is more, Miss Sophonisba Beverly knew all this, and 
she did not hesitate to say it. She had been away 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. II9 

from Chicago a great deal. In fact, she had been 
around the world several times. Never in later years 
feeling any need of a personal chaperon, she traveled 
much alone, of only with her maids — a free American 
woman, proud in the consciousness that she could take 
care of herself and others. She was right. She did 
take care of herself in all parts of the world. Others 
she was very ready to care for if she only could fjnd 
them. But those she would care for are people 
whom she had not been able to find through seeking. 
They are “lost ones” for whom she had been on a 
quest for years. 

Now, at last. Miss Sophonisba was back once more 
in Chicago for what promised to be a lengthy visit 
with the family and in the home of her half-brother, 
Verrazano Beverly, the State Street merchant who 
had come into possession of the whole vast business 
of her step-father, and most of the millions he had 
left in real estate and hard cash. 

Everybody was glad to see “Aunt Sophonisba” 
again, her health having been reported very poor. 
Everybody thought she had simply come home to die. 
But she was resolved that she would “fool them.” In 
her resolution she was. encouraged amply by the family 
physician. Dr. W. H. Barrett, who finds she has been 
improving every day since her arrival from Japan, 
some three months before. 

It was about twenty minutes before noontide on 
the day after his ride in the automobile with John 
Lodge that the young lady attendant in Dr. Barrett’s 
office announced that Miss Sophonisba Beverly was 


120 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


one of several persons waiting in the outer reception 
room and that she begged an audience without fur- 
ther delay. 

“On a professional matter?” queried the physician, 
instinctively surveying in a looking glass his faultless 
attire. 

“That is the idea she sought to convey, sir,” was 
the reply. 

“Don’t show her in; I will come out and try and 
head her off.” 

“Very well, sir,” said the girl with a merry little 
giggle, less than half suppressed. 

“Ah, my dear Miss Beverly, how are you today?” 
said the physician, as he strode into the vestibule, his 
fine physique and classic face showing off to ecstatic 
advantage. 

“My, how handsome you are today, dear doctor,” 
replied his visitor. “Except yourself nothing in Chi- 
cago or this country is as good looking as formerly. 
But you, doctor, why you are growing finer and more 
majestic all the time.” 

A suspicious little cough at the telephone-desk of 
the ofiice girl sounded the death knell of another 
giggle. A deep blush now suffused the doctor’s cheeks, 
but he stood his ground and looked severely at the tit- 
tering girl. There were no more giggles that day. 

In lowered tones the doctor and Miss Beverly con- 
versed for a while. He soon found that he had cor- 
rectly divined the object of her visit at an hour so un- 
usually early for her. It was to learn what she could 
about the mysterious occurrences that disturbed and 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


I2I 


puzzled her at her brother’s home the afternoon of the 
day before, and to see if some of the blame for Mr. 
Beverly’s great mental excitement could not be laid 
to Mrs. Beverly whom she always secretly disliked, 
because, among other reasons, she never thought her 
quite good enough to have had matrimonial alliance 
with the Beverly family. 

‘Why, doctor, I really believe she hoped, for som^ 
reason, that those splendid bays would become run- 
aways again yesterday after their first escapade and 
that they would get killed. How evil a thought,” said 
Miss Sophonisba. 

“Oh, all women are more or less afraid of horses 
that once have become runaways,” replied the physi- 
cian. “That’s natural, more or less.” 

“Not a bit more natural than to treat them more 
kindly than ever. What did I do? Why, I drove 
them myself today and now have them in waiting in 
the street below. I know you also have the courage to 
drive them, and I would like to see you do it.” 

“Impossible, Miss Beverly, impossible today,” said 
the ph}'sician quickly, and with perfect nonchalance. 
“I have long known of course that you are an excel- 
lent whip and as brave as any little woman can be, 
but ” 

“You are very kind, doctor, and it is so nice to hear 
you say all that,” said Miss Sophonisba, “but will you 
please tell me something to clear up the mystery of 
that rifle shooting by my poor brother and all his men- 
tal excitement?” 

“It is just as I explained last evening to all the fam- 


122 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


ily, including yourself, Miss Beverly,” replied the 
doctor. man who must have been actuated by 

motives of robbery beat him up badly, causing severe 
mental strain and excitement. But Mr. Beverly will 
be all right in a few days. All he needed was a 
tonic, a little court plaster and some rest. He is get- 
ting all that in his good home. His mind is all right 
in every way. There is not the least cause for worry.” 

‘^Oh, I know that woman who is his wife does not 
care for him, or for anything save society matters,” 
said Miss Sophonisba. ‘T cannot stand it. I will 
become thoroughly disgusted and go away again to 
England, Italy or Japan.” 

^‘But they have a beautiful daughter, as good as 
she is beautiful, and they both adore her,” declared 
the doctor enthusiastically. 

^‘All adore her,” said Miss Sophonisba, with tears 
gathering in her eyes. ^‘Only for her dear sake I am 
sure I would not stay at all in Chicago, but would 
travel always.” 

When she had wiped her tears and replaced in her 
reticule her elegant lace handkerchief the little lady — 
who was interesting for her emotions and kind ways, 
though decidedly plain in face and manners — leaned 
forward in the divan, where she sat with the doctor, 
and almost whispered these words in his ear : 

^Well, at any rate I believe that brother would long 
ago have tried to carry out that burning wish of mine 
if the influence of his wife — ambitious, grasping 
woman that she is — ^liad not opposed obstacles to a 
successful quest.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I23 

“Yes, it is too bad,” said the doctor, “but perhaps 
justice will yet be done. Surely there is yet enough for 
all, with $50,000,000 as your brother’s fortune and 
the other matters going fairly well all around.” 

It was now the time when Miss Sophonisba thought 
it proper to show an inclination to conclude her visit. 
So the physician arose and escorted her toward the 
elevator. They continued their conversation in the 
hall, and to the last it had to do with the family 
mysteries of the Beverlys — mysteries about which the 
family physician was as thoroughly posted as Miss 
Sophonisba, although as was natural enough — despite 
his broad sympathies — they failed to stir his emotions 
as deeply as hers. He had barely said a final word of 
good-bye to her as she disappeared in the descending 
elevator when a young man, with pale face and serious 
looks, stepped off another elevator car on the same 
floor. It is John Lodge. 


124 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XVri. 

For several seconds the doctor and John gazed at 
each other in silence, each' involuntarily seeking in- 
formation in the other’s looks and manner. So ab- 
sorbed were they in this intuitive quest that each at 
first forgot to extend the customary greetings. 

It was the doctor who first broke silence. 

“I have been expecting you,” he said, quietly. 
“Come in. I got your letter. But really I don’t know 
whether you are to be congratulated for having come 
into possession of so much wealth. You said in your 
letter that your parents had quite enough wealth to 
give you a safe competence, besides affording you a 
fair start in any line of business you may care to enter. 
In such a state of affairs I fancy you had nothing to 
desire.” 

“Absolutely nothing,” said John, with a sigh. 
“Now, I am simply embarrassed with money, but I 
shall try and do all the good I can with it.” 

“I am sure you will, my dear boy, and I only hope 
that your plans will be appreciated by the masses of 
the people,” said the doctor. “Are you entirely de- 
termined to start the sort of newspaper you spoke of 
in your letter?” 

“Yes, doctor, that is absolutely settled.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER 125 

‘‘But have you already got actual possession of the 
estate ?” 

“Yes,” replied John in matter of fact tones, “I signed 
the consular papers in the law office of Alfred Osborne 
and Son, after which I went with the consul-general 
to five different banks and was told that at each bank 
$11,000,000 awaited my order.” 

“What a colossal fortune?” said the doctor. “It is 
almost bewildering in magnitude. But even the $55',- 
000,000 is not all, as I understand matters.” 

“Why, it seems there is to be much more,” replied 
John. “The consul says it will be at least $85,000,000 
when it is finally settled up in the Brazilian probate 
courts.” 

“Immense,” murmured the doctor, musingly. 

After a pause he looked fixedly at John and said: 

“What with your altruistic schemes which may not 
be appreciated properly by the public, for whose 
benefit you intend them, it behooves you to see to 
it that you will not forget to exercise prudence for 
yourself and any dear ones who may ever be depend- 
ent on you. So you should put aside a certain fixed 
sum, or property, that none of the reverses of busi- 
ness could ever cause to melt away.” 

“Doctor, if you will excuse me, we will talk about 
all that some other time ; I cannot discuss it now, 
I am too miserable.” 

“Miserable, after just obtaining a legacy of 
$85,000,000!” 

“Yes, most truly miserable, my good friend,” said 


126 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


John, his voice quivering with emotion. “What is 
more, I would give the whole $85,000,000 if I could 
set the hands back twenty-four hours upon the face 
of time; if I could uqdo just one thing that has been 
done; or if with the $85,000,000 I could have pur- 
chased, without being too late, an antidote for my 
awful forgetfulness of yesterday and the last few 
weeks.’’ 

“You amaze me, John — I mean Mr. Lodge. What 
can it be that has caused you such terrible sorrow?” 

John’s head was bowed; his bosom was heaving; 
his hands were clutched in- what seemed an agony. 
With a great effort he calmed himself momentarily. 

“John is my name, doctor,” he said, without rais- 
ing his eyes from the floor. “I wish you would al- 
ways call me by that name, and just as informally 
as you would speak to a brother. For I cannot 
forbear saying, that in reference to you I have been 
inclined, since that meeting of ours on the train, to 
follow unquestioningly certain advice of Polonius 
which I would paraphase thus: 

“The friend I have and his true merits known, 

I would grapple him to my soul with hoops of 
steel.” 

“My dear friend, you are very kind,” said the 
doctor, with emotion that he strove hard to sup- 
press. “ ‘John’ let it be then, now and forever. But 
tell me at once, my friend, what it is that causes 
you such anguish?” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


127 


Silently John Lodge reached a hand into a pocket 
of his coat. Drawing forth a letter that had pre- 
viously been opened, he handed it to the doctor. 

“Read,” he said. 

The doctor hesitated. 

“Do I know the writer?” he asked. 

“You will know of her later,” was the answer. 

But the physician was already perusing the script. 
It read: 

Mr. Lodge: 

It may surprise you to know that I have not had anything 
to eat for two days. Before leaving you yesterday I was 
about to tell you of my predicament, but my courage failed 
me. Now it is too late. 

In a few minutes I shall leave this boarding-house, to go 
I know not where — to do I know not what. My room rent 
here I have paid in full to date. I never took board here. 
Knowing that I had not the price of the food, I made no 
engagements for meals. 

I don’t know whether this letter will ever reach you, but 
if it should and you care to see me again, I will be present 
at 10 tomorrow forenoon in the railroad waiting room in 
front of which I saw you for the last time on the day we 
were passengers aboard the same train for this dreadful 
city. 

Very sincerely, 

Algona Norwell. 


128 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Handing the letter back to John, the doctor said 
in a voice choking with emotion : 

"‘Well, poor girl, I hope you saw her.*^ 

^‘That’s just what the trouble is; I haven’t seen 
her.” 

“But ’tis long after lo o’clock. Surely you kept 
the tryst at the railroad station?” 

“I have only just come from there, doctor. I 
waited nearly two hours for her, but she did not 
come.” 

“Why, that’s too bad,” said the doctor anxiously, 
“but she may come yet. Let’s hurry back there at 
once; she may be awaiting you there now.” 

“No chance of that, doctor,” replied John. 

“Why, has anything happened to ” 

“She was there about 8 o’clock and she then left 
word with a porter that she could not meet me ; 
but the fellow seemed to have forgotten all about it 
until I had been more than an hour waiting for her.” 

“No word left by her as to when she would meet 
you ?” 

“Not a word, doctor, and that is the very worst 
aspect of the case,” answered John. “What I blame 
myself for is my queer forgetfulness in failing to 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 29 

learn more about her affairs in all the chances I 
had to be of service to her. But, my dear doctor, 
I have not told you who she is, or anything at all 
about her.’' 

“That is so; you have not told me anything at 
all, and I am so interested.” 

“Well, my dear friend, let me say that I know 
hardly anything myself, except that she must be con- 
sidered by all whose opinion should count the most 
beautiful girl in the world.” 

“Ah,” said the physician. 

“Yes, and she was abroad the train with us the day 
I met you in Michigan, but she was not in the coach 
where we sat.” 

“Is that so?” 

“How strange I did not say something about her 
at the time? Her beauty was so remarkable that no- 
body could fail to notice it.” 

And so John ran on, enthusiastically setting forth 
his ideas of the girl’s many graces and charms. He 
told the physician practically all he knew of her, 
just how often he had met her and so forth. He 
remarked that something unusual and exceedingly 
exciting always happened when he chanced to be in 
her company. He told how he lost track of her at 
the depot on the day of her arrival, and that he 
rescued her a few minutes later from the talons of 
a scoundrelly young man. But he hesitated on 
reaching the point in his narrative where the en- 
counter with the great merchant should be told, if 


130 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

his story was to be continued then and there to its 
proper finale. 

“Proceed, my friend; don’t mind me; I know it 
all, anyway,” said Dr. Barrett, with a quiet smile. 

“Know it all? Know what?” cried John, in aston- 
ishment. 

“Why that it was you who very properly admin- 
istered physical chastisement to the great merchant 
who was my patient yesterday afternoon, and that 
this girl. Miss Norwell, was the immediate cause of 
the encounter.” 

“How did you come to know it, doctor?” 

“In the very simplest way in the world ; my pa- 
tient told me all about it.” 

“Ah, I see; few things are long kept secret from 
the family physician.” 

“That’s just it, my boy; but of course I can not 
take the initiative in discussing professional confi- 
dences of that nature. I will say, though, that I 
believe he tried to shoot you yesterday afternoon, 
but, strange to say I could not see any mark of a 
bullet in your clothes at the time, nor in the auto- 
mobile when I examined it later at my leisure. I 
doubt, however, whether he was responsible at the 
time for anything he may have done. He was sim- 
ply beside himself with rage when he recognized 
you in the automobile. Did you hear the whistle of 
any of the bullets around your ears? Or did any of 
them hit your clothing, or whiz close by you ?” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


131 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Before John had time to make answer the office 
door opened and a newspaper reporter, well known 
alike to the doctor and to John, stood bowing and 
smiling upon the threshold. He said: 

“Ah, how do you do, doctor? Glad to see you. 
Lodge, old man. Have come to congratulate you 
and to write you up. The story of your good luck 
in falling heir to that $85,000,000 in Brazil has 
leaked out through an attache of one of the con- 
sulates in Chicago. Is it true? Really, I hope it is. 
And if it is, then what are you going to do with all 
the money? You know those are the customary 
questions in such cases made and provided for re- 
porters to propound to the lucky one.” 

“Yes, the questions are excusable, friend Joseph,” 
said John. “But let me answer with all proper 
despatch. It is true that I have fallen heir to all 
that money.” 

“What is more,” said Dr. Barrett, “he has come 
into actual possession of it already.” 

“Oh, let me felicitate you then once more,” said 
the scribe, arising and effusiv'ely shaking hands 
with John. “But you have not said what you will 
do with it? Buy an automobile or two; or attempt 
to revive the lost arts — say the industry of building 


i 


132 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

real flying airships— the line of endeavor about 
which you wrote such fascinating newspaper ac- 
counts some months ago?” 

“No, indeed, my plans are far more common- 
place — more practical; I should rather say.” 

. “What is your principal plan?” 

“It is this: I will start a daily newspaper in this 
city at once.” 

“Seriously ?” 

“Yes, most seriously.” 

“What will be its politics?” 

“No politics.” 

“Won’t it stand for something — some leading 
idea ?” 

“It will.” 

“For what?” 

“Humanity.” 

“That is a broad platform.” 

“No broader than I would like to make any and 
every newspaper owned or controlled by me.”'' 

“Specifically speaking,” said the reporter, “will 
you please designate any classes whom your news- 
paper will represent.” . • 

“No classes; absolutely none.” 

“Whose aspirations will it voice then, and what 
aspirations?” 

“It will be the voice of the wage-earning masses. 
They are the people — the masses and not the classes. 
Oppressive employers are the classes, the original 
get-rich-quick people; beneficiaries of monopolies 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 33 

and special privileges who very often make their 
riches by squeezing the toilers, and who have com- 
bined in monopolistic socialism to deprive the toil- 
ers of their just share of the profits earned under 
the economic system of industrial individualism — 
the system which is the best yet evolved for the car- 
rying on of all legitimate industries, but which has 
been almost overthrown in late years by the social- 
ism of the rich in their trusts and combinations. For 
the restoration and re-enthronement of true indi- 
vidualism among all the people — the individualism 
that encourages effort and secures to each the full 
reward of his inventiveness or labor — that is what 
my newspaper will stand for. That will be its mis- 

• yy 

Sion. 

‘‘My, but I wish I could put your programme in 
print for my paper quite as strongly as you express 
it,’^ said the newspaper man. 

“No, your paper would not print it, nor would 
any other metropolitan paper,” said John, with 
emphasis. “If the press had been accustomed to 
advocacy of the cause of the oppressed there would 
be no necessity for me to start the sort of newspaper 
I have planned. Pretense has occasionally been 
made in sensational new journals that the people’s 
cause is near to the hearts of such papers’ man- 
agers. But let any of those publications attain a 
fairly large circulation, coupled with well-paying 
advertising, and it quickly abandons the people to 
their fate. That is the history of the small begin- 


134 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


nings of most of the so-called great metropolitan 
newspapers of the day, but we fail to find this phase 
of the question brought into relief, if at all discussed, 
in any of the accessible histories of such publica- 
tions.” 

“I have no doubt you are entirely right in all that, 
Mr. Lodge,” said the reporter. ‘‘With your ideas 
and the ability and resources at your command you 
ought to make a great paper. How I should like 
to work on it?” 

‘‘Would you like to write such things — would your 
heart be wholly in such a cause?” 

“Certainly it would, Mr. Lodge,” replied the in- 
terviewer. “And 'I should be especially pleased to 
write for your new paper. It will be great — is bound 
to be great. Perhaps I will be seeking a place one 
of these days on your staff of writers.” 

“Do you want such a place?” 

“Most assuredly I do.” 

“Then you shall have it,” said John Lodge. “A 
place will be found for you.” 

At this denouement the doctor laughed heartily. 
He clapped his hands in applause, and congratulated 
both his visitors on their arrangement and the laud- 
able decision with which they reached it. 

“Now, would you please tell briefly how your uncle 
acquired such a vast fortune?” said the reporter. 

“In a most honorable way, I assure you,” John 
replied. “Had it been acquired dishonorably I 
should have refused to accept it.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I35 

“What business was he engaged in, down in the 
South American country?” 

“He was the confidential agent who handled all the 
finances of the Brazilian government. His services 
were considered so valuable to government and peo- 
ple that practically all his wealth was donated to him, 
forced upon him, as I understand it. His repeated 
refusals of the government grants would not be lis- 
tened to. When he reminded the generous represen- 
tatives of the great nation he had served that he had 
no children or direct heirs, and that the great fortune 
was more than he could ever use or fully enjoy, he 
was told that the wealth was his beyond recall and 
it would be delivered at his death to the heir or heirs 
who may be found to be his next-of-kin in the great 
free country of his birth. Now, that is how I came 
into possession of those millions. Like my uncle I 
found that I was hardly free to decline the fortune or 
any portion of it. Such action, I was told, would 
deeply offend the generous Brazilian people and their 
government. So I accepted under protest. In any 
case, it is my intention to go to Brazil in the very 
near future, and I will then arrange to put most of 
the money into certain enterprises that will be a pub- 
lic benefit — a benefit to all the Brazilian people. 
Money made in Brazil must and shall be spent there, 
and in public enterprises that will be of the utmost 
benefit to all Brazilians.” 

“They would not have to press me very hard to 


136 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

take the fortune/' said the reporter. ^‘Would they 
have to press you, doctor?” 

But the doctor was not exploiting his views to the 
public just at this time. He remained silent, not 
feeling called upon to answer the reporter’s ques- 
tion. 

“Well, my good friends, if I can be of real service 
to either of you, all you have to do is to let me 
know,” said John, with a pleasant smile. 

“Thanks, many thanks,” answered the reporter, 
“but really you have not yet told me enough. I 
want to get a sketch of your life — where you were 
born, where educated and all that sort of thing.” 

“It is not my way to shout all about my history 
from the housetops, but if you really must have such 
material I will tell you where to seek it,” replied John. 
“If you will call Rev. Dr. H. H. Hull on the tele- 
phone he will be able to tell you all you want along 
the line you have now taken. He was my class- 
mate and friend at Harvard, and he has in his pos- 
session a certain college publication that contains 
a sufficient biography of me for all purposes likely 
to be necessary any time, now or hereafter.” 

“But are you quite sure he has it yet?” 

“Quite certain. I saw it in his library a few 
evenings ago,” 

“Then I shall have from him the completion of 
tlie story,” said the reporter, “so I shall now depart.” 
^ “Stay a moment,” said John Lodge. “Let me now 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 37 

ask you one question. How did you ever find out 
that I was here in Dr. Barrett’s office?” 

“Oh, that is a little secret,” laughed the scribe. 
“You know the wide-awake newspaper men have 
many sources of secret information. It has been 
mooted around that there is no secret which you did 
not master in the business during your brief service 
in newspaper harness; but if press work really has 
any unraveled mysteries for you, it is by the sale 
of such information to you, Mr. Lodge, that I shall 
expect to make myself useful to you as a member of 
the staff of your paper. Au revoir, messieurs.” 

When the reporter had departed John Lodge 
said : 

“He was entirely right to refuse that information. 
Indeed, I should not have asked him such a ques- 
tion ; and had he given me time, I would have with- 
drawn it. No doubt, he was under promise not to 
disclose the thing I asked him. It is a hopeful sign 
of the times to find how scrupulously newspaper 
men respect any secrets or confidences they are 
asked to keep inviolate. Now, I rather like that 
young man; in fact have taken quite a fancy to him.” 

“I have known him for some years, and I always 
liked him,” said the doctor. “He is capable and re- 
liable. I hope you will give him a good position.” 

“I certainly shall,” declared John. 

Glancing at his watch, the doctor said, with finest 
urbanity : 

“Come and take lunch with me at my club. I am 


138 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

much interested in your plans for starting this 
unique newspaper, and it would give me the very 
greatest pleasure to hear all about the odd venture.” 

“That suits me admirably, doctor,” replied John, 
“as I want your advice on many important phases 
of the project.” 

In a moment they were on the way to the club 
house, a few blocks away on Michigan Avenue. As 
they paced onward side by side they conversed about 
the new paper as connectedly as was possible amid 
the din in the thoroughfares of the Chicago down- 
town district — the vortex for the surging tide of the 
great city’s teeming millions. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


139 


CHAPTER XX. 

Despite the doctor’s advice for rest and avoidance 
of excitement. Mr. Beverly was at his desk in his 
office downtown quite early on the morning after 
his ‘"accident” at the hands of the supposed holdup 
man. He was little the worse for the wear and tear 
of his physical constitution, his nerves, or his emo- 
tions. In a barber’s chair of a sumptuous Lake 
front hotel he had undergone some facial repairs 
almost at sunrise, but all the masseur’s art had not 
been able completely to blot out the physical traces 
of the smashing, bruising blow from John Lodge’s 
powerful hand. Through the white-washing paste 
applied by the barber a slight purplish, or bue black 
discoloration of the epithelium near the optic bor- 
ders was plainly discernible on one side of the great 
merchant’s face. 

His attire was faultless from the point of view of 
the connoisseur in what constitutes the ensemble in 
taste and style for a dressy busfness man. Though 
no longer young, this particular merchant, rated 
many times a millionaire, was still somewhat of a 
dandy. He certainly was dashing and picturesque. 
So well groomed and sleek and polished did he seem 


140 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


in all respects that he really was still in the prime 
of life, so far as appearances would indicate. 

An opalesque sparkle radiated from his keen, grey 
eyes as he gazed around his luxurious suite of pri- 
vate offices, with their furnishings of massive, hand- 
carved oak and scented woods, and rarest, most 
costly oriental rugs and tapestries. 

By no means handsome, this man was still just 

* 

good looking enough to please the esthetic femi- 
nine eye. Tall, but not angular, his physique 
was of the type generally spoken of as manly and 
fine. Still he was not at all robust. He had an 
occasional cough that racked his frame for minutes 
consecutively, but the suggestiveness in this afflic- 
tion only caused a habitually stern look of resolu- 
tion to become all the more set on his finely chiseled 
• face, with that firm chin and broad, low, rectangular- 
shaped forehead which women so generally admire. 
A predominant trait, as he took in hand and passed 
upon the great stacks of business papers before him, 
seemed to be a sort of dynamic energy in his 
activities. 

In all that he did he was quick, decisive and thor- 
ough. An administrative steam engine in broad- 
cloth — his role while in his office was that of the 
busy man of large affairs. That was the part he ful- 
filled every hour of the day. It was by means of 
this masterly faculty for management of details 
that he had succeeded in developing and preserving 
the great business, inherited from his father, until 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I4I 

the concern had become one of the largest and rich- 
est mercantile houses in all the world. In late years, 
however, this great merchant had permitted many 
distractions and diversions to interfere with the at- 
tention due to his vast affairs of business. Grad- 
ually the incompetent service of high-salaried favor- 
ites was having an injurious effect. Profits of the 
business had fallen off alarmingly for some time; 
but in the last few months under the stimulus of 
the proprietor’s active resumption of the directing 
role the state of chaos began to yield to the orderli- 
ness of sound financiering, and once more the for- 
tunes of the firm seemed on the ascendant. 

It was just 10 o’clock when the junior partner of 
the firm — a man who had been of great service in 
hushing up the scandal of the day before and in se- 
curing its exclusion from the columns of the news- 
papers — appeared upon the office threshold and 
requested a moment’s private audience with the 
head of the house. 

Together they stepped aside into a bay window 
overlooking a great shopping thoroughfare beneath. 
As the junior member spoke his message the great 
merchant’s eyes flashed fire and the tint of the rose 
welled up into and almost suffused his olive-colored 
face. In his voice was a distinct note of intense 
satisfaction — of triumph almost — as he asked : 

“Are you quite sure it is she?” 

“Entirely certain, sir,” was the obsequious an- 
swer of the junior partner, who had not yet quite 


142 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

divested himself of the deferential manners which he 
had acquired in years of service as an employe of the 
firm — service from which he had only recently been 
promoted by the favor of Mr. Beverly to a junior 
partnership. 

“Remember, my good friend, that for the present 
I don’t want to be drawn into any more affairs with 
maidens, whether from city or country,” said Mr. 
Beverly. “Lots of time must be allowed for the 
episode of yesterday to blow over. As you know 
very well, we never before had such a hard time 
having anything suppressed by the newspapers.” 

“Too true, Mr. Beverly, too true, indeed,” said 
the other. “Why in less than an hour after the occur- 
rence, every newspaper in the city had a circumstantial 
account of the whole affair. How they got it was a 
mystery.” 

“Not a bit of a mystery — not a bit,” said Beverly. 
“The other party to the affair told it. Of course, he 
told it everywhere — scattered it broadcast in the hope 
of getting out of it some notoriety as a sort of hero.” 

“But the editors said he did not tell it, and that they 
had the story from some secret source which they were 
not at liberty to divulge.” 

“Nevertheless, I believe that the information came 
from that queer young fellow, or his close personal 
friends.” 

“That may be the truth, of course,” said the junior 
merchant. “But, whatever the source, the story created 
a flurry and furore in all the newspaper offices. Each 
editor-in-chief seemed afraid that in a moment of aber- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I43 

ration as to the supposed rights of the public to get 
the news, some other editor or sub-editor might yield 
to the temptation to make a sensation by publishing the 
story in full. That was where the trouble came in, 
for we had to convince each editor that every other edi- 
tor would stand pat for suppression. If by any mis- 
hap one should print it, then all the others would have 
to follow suit next day ; or stand convicted before their 
readers of attempting to shield a gay plutocrat, 
simply because he is or is supposed to be a plutocrat. 
But we did at last succeed in getting all the responsible 
editors into communication over the telephone, either 
in their offices or their homes, or at the clubs.” 

'Tt is clear we could never have had the thing sup- 
pressed at all,” said Beverly, ‘‘only for the immense 
subsidies our firm gives the various newspapers in the 
shape of advertising patronage. That is what did the 
trick, my good fellow — our full page display advertise- 
ments at so much the page. Oh, Tom, but I do hope 
I may be old indeed, and have the heyday in my blood 
very quiet and tame, before some genius of the news- 
paper world will inaugurate that inevitable journalistic 
reform — the coming great newspaper — the newspaper 
that will absolutely refuse to print any paid advertise- 
ments at all. When that time comes — as come it will 
— I can see what the end will be not only for our sup- 
pression of legitimate news concerning our pecadillos 
or worse, but the end also of the hoarding of vast 
fortunes in any one line of business. For a non-adver- 
tising press will really be the voice of the people. 
Once the subsidies in the shape of paid advertisements 


144 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


are thrown out of the daily and Sunday newspapers, 
then there will go up such a demand for the giving of a 
proper share of the profits to the wage-earners — that 
legislation enforcing those reforms will quickly be 
obtained through the ballot box. Whether this can 
be brought about without a revolution and much blood- 
letting I know not, but I feel it in my bones that the day 
of reckoning with such reform ideas and their advo- 
cates is fast approaching — in fact is liable to be upon 
us almost any day. To me the wonder is that the 
people who do all the real hard work of the world 
have stood the abominable oppression of the present in- 
dustrial system so long — that they have not arisen in 
their might and cut off hundreds of heads — ” 

'‘Mr. Beverly, you are in sombre mood this morn- 
ing,” said the startled junior partner, "but you for- 
get that she is in the outer office all this time; and 
that she may lose patience and go — which, of course, 
is all right enough if you want her to go.” 

"Tom, my good man, I have appreciated your faith- 
fulness during all these years, and your kindness in 
regard to rhy weaknesses for the company of beauti- 
ful, innocent maidens, fresh from the country.” 

"Yes, sir, and this one is the most beautiful oi them 
all ; nothing ever seen like her.” 

"That’s just what I thought from the little I saw 
of her yesterday,” said the merchant. "Now, if I were 
only sure — ” 

"Have no fear, sir,” replied the former employe, 
"she is the very same girl.” 

"Why that’s not it, Thomas. I have no fear that 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I45 

you could be mistaken, as I now remember it was you 
who told me about her, first of all. But what worries 
me is lest there may be some trap. Her young com- 
panion of yesterday having lost his place on the staff 
of the paper may have concocted a scheme of revenge, 
using the same girl as a decoy. Indeed he may be 
lurking around our big store somewhere, awaiting a 
signal or a message from her. Besides, it may be his 
plan to get me once more in some compromising posi- 
tion, so he could again attack and beat an old man in 
the cowardly way he did yesterday afternoon. Let 
me see? Have I a six-shooter? Ah, yes, I have and 
a good one. With this I can hold him at bay if he 
tries his funny business again. By my heart, I will 
pepper him. Once I could shoot straight, very 
straight ; but I fear the pretty girls of the choruses and 
the ballets have unstrung m}^ nerves with the excite- 
ments of the blood and reason which they pile upon a 
jolly old fellow who has money to shower upon them.” 

“You need have no fear, sir. We shall watch every 
approach, and you need not leave your private office. 
I will guarantee personally that no one disturbs your 
tete-a-tete with the young lady.” 

“That’s right; guard every approach and send her 
in here,” said the merchant. 

Then, hesitatingly he added : “Stay a moment. Fm 
taking a great risk — don’t you think so ?” 

“I can’t see it that way, sir,” said the other. “You 
did not send for this maiden. Despite what occurred 
yesterday she calls around here today, and in a sweet, 
pleasant way, and with pretty blushes struggling 


146 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

through her smiles, she begs to see you again, insist- 
ing that she wants to make explanations and apologies 
for certain recent occurrences. Then why have you 
not a perfect right to see her, if you want to?’’ 

^‘Thomas Wilbur Fairchild, let me tell you a little 
story. Once upon a time — ” 

“Oh, she’ll get tired of waiting, sir.” 

“No fear of that. If she wants an answer, and has 
come for it, she’ll stay till she gets it. What I was 
going to say is this : If the big merger railroad trusts 
had only been wise enough to give full-page, well- 
paid advertisements to the newspapers of the great 
cities not even the yellow journals of the most flam- 
boyant kind would wage war upon them. Instead of 
being denounced as unholy combinations and criminal 
trusts they would be praised as beneficent, the pro- 
moters of economy in administration, the necessary 
and inevitable sequal of modern progress and civiliza- 
tion. And it would be the same story with the Horgan 
and Hogafeller schools of high finance and trust pro- 
motion. Had those worthies only made it clear that 
they would have large advertising patronage to dispose 
of, as the representatives of the allied and trustified 
captains of industry, there is hardly a doubt but that 
they would have enjoyed practical immunity from the 
criticisms of the press and that no considerations of 
the public good would be allowed to interfere in the 
newspaper columns with the chance for long-continued 
subsidising. No risks would be taken that possibly 
might cause a stoppage of the flow of the trust-con- 
taminated gold finding its way, through advertising, 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


147 


into the journalistic coffers. Still, I am strongly of 
the opinion that the time will come when the magnates 
in control of the big trusts and mergers will be driven, 
in sheer self-defence, to advertise extensively, so as to 
buy off the hungry and jealous pack of journalistic 
wolves, just as the department stores have been forced 
for somewhat similar reasons to advertise more and 
more extensively as the years go by. In fact already 
several of the larger industrial trusts are advertising 
quite largely ; the others will follow suit in due course. 

‘^And there is yet another thing I want to say just 
now. It is this : 

“Once it was the custom for the fellows who were 
the world’s masters to cut off rebellious working- 
men’s heads and set them upon spikes of gates in the 
citadels and fortresses of the ruling oligarchies. But 
now that is all changed. The working, wage-earning 
masses have all power in their hands, if they only knew 
it. Should they some day have sense enough to unite 
and fully exercise their power, we who have been 
smart enough to get our hands on the world’s wealth 
would have mighty short shrift. Yea, I fear we may 
even get a taste of our own medicine on the spike- 
heads. But so long as the other rich fellows hold on 
to the loot gotten out of the wage-earners, why should 
I surrender my share — even though it really is loot, 
which I am not saying it isn’t. If a just share of their 
earnings were given to the toilers, I suppose it would 
then be clear enough that there could be nq colossal 
private fortunes running into the millions and billions. 
But the political economists have been our friends — 


148 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

niy friends. They have befogged the people for cen- 
turies with their talk about laws of supply and demand. 

“Moreover, why should I, or this firm, not have 
taken advantage — as was done to the full — of the 
favoring laws which have been purchased through all 
the country’s legislatures with the boodle funds that 
vested interests have known so well how to raise for 
liberal use among purchaseable law-makers? Why — ” 

“Are you not wandering from the subject, sir, and 
so pretty a subject, too?” said Fairchild. 

“No, not at all man'. You must be a bigger dunce 
than I ever suspected, if you don’t see I am indulging 
in mere platitudes so as to gain time. I feel it is a 
risk, a great risk, to see her again. A burned child, 
you know, dreads things. Besides, there is always a 
risk that some scoundrel may get a scandal or other 
sensational story printed in a newspaper of some out- 
side city, thus forcing the local papers to take it up. 
Of course, that accommodating monopoly, the Disso- 
ciated Press, will never send anything to outside papers 
that is not printed in one of the home dailies first. Still, 
in order to make an impression for supposed enterprise, 
the leading dailies of this and other big cities have to 
send out special correspondents to the centers of popu- 
lation. There’s the danger — a danger that is enhanced 
by the long continuance of any one scandal. 

“Are you still trying to gain time to arrive at a de- 
cision? Eh, Mr. Beverly?” said Fairchild, with a 
simpering smile. 

“Perhaps I am. But no. The decision is formed. 
Pm game. I may as well enjoy myself while I can. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I49 

The fire of the blood gives out with age. Show her 
in — but first see that all necessary and advisable pre- 
cautions are taken. And bear in mind especially that 
I am busy and can't be disturbed. Keep a sharp look- 
out yourself ; also tell Hardy and Johnson and a few 
more of our old reliable house detectives to keep their 
eyes wide open. That busybody of a newspaper scrib- 
bler I do not want again to interfere in any affair 
of mine with a maiden fair. No law of supply and 
demand will apply now-a-days to the supply of pretty 
maidens. In their case the supply never keeps pace 
any more with the demand. Isn't that so, my boy? 
Well, Pm game, as I said before. But nobody must 
be present when I meet her this time.' We shall need 
no introduction — she and I. Now go, and send her 
in without delay." 

He did as bidden — stepped outside the door. Algona 
Norwell stepped within. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


150 


CHAPTER XXI. 

When the seconds had lengthened into minutes, 
the minutes into hours, and still nothing was heard 
from Verrazano Beverly, nothing seen of the girl 
who had entered his private office for an interview 
with him, the junior partner, keeping an apparently 
careless, but nevertheless very thorough vigil in the 
outer office, became very uneasy, then suspicious, 
then alarmed. 

Sending for the tried and true detectives. Hardy 
and Johnson, the junior partner went into consulta- 
tion with them. They were at a loss to fathom the 
mystery. But they were unanimous in the opinion 
that an attempt should be made to fathom it, and 
made at once. Delay may prove to be wrong, or 
even fatal. So on one pretense or another the few 
clerks and office boys in this particular department 
of the big store were momentarily gotten 9.way from 
the scene. Then Mr. Fairchild rapped cautiously on 
the great merchant's office door. 

No answer! 

He rapped again. But, as before, no answer! 

All three members of the watchful, expectant 
squad listened for some noise, as of a rustling gar- 
ment or other movement, in the merchant’s secret 
suite. Nothing was heard, and the trio were amazed. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I5I 

They looked at one another in blank astonish- 
ment. Then Fairchild whispered excitedly in the 
others’ ears : 

“Heavens, something must be wrong, gentlemen; 
follow me; I’ll lead the way.” 

They burst into the rooms. But nobody was 
there. Neither the merchant nor Algona was any- 
where to be seen. They had disappeared as if the 
ground had swallowed them; but where they had 
gone, or how they had been able to leave the rooms, 
unseen by the lynx-eyed men keeping watch and 
ward on the outside, was a mystery that completely 
baffled the searchers. 


152 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

It took only a very few minutes for Dr. Barrett and 
John Lodge to reach the fashionable club where they 
were to lunch together. All along the way they had 
talked incessantly about the new daily paper that John 
had decided he would start in Chicago at once. 

When they sat down at table in the magnificently 
furnished dining room for the club members and 
guests on the second floor of the splendid brown-stone 
club-house, they found themselves in a cozy nook over- 
looking the lake and the lakefront park. Beneath was 
that splendid and justly famous thoroughfare Michi- 
gan Boulevard. Away toward the lake in the public 
park were the stub-ends of several unfinished drive- 
ways intended to wind in serpentine course around 
through wooded islands and alongside the water front 
and afford in many places delightful glimpses of 
scenic luxuriance through vistas of foliage that were 
expected in time to be none the less pleasing for being 
creations of landscape gardening, instead of nature's 
primeval forestry. 

From the windows of the famous clubhouse John 
had a splendid view of the driveway to the north. His 
dark-brown eyes sparkled brightly as he watched the 
lively procession of vehicles roll by, many of them 
horseless carriages as richly tinted as the cheeks of 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. ' 1 53 

country maidens, or the dazzling hues of autumnal 
leaves. 

As each of the two friends was reasonably impres- 
sionable to the wistfulness of the scant charms dis- 
played by nature in the scenery of a park that has been 
called a mangy grass-plot, they ate in silence for 
some time. In fact, it was well nigh the close of the 
luncheon before anything except the excellent menu 
was discussed by the two friends. 

When the conversation at last became somewhat 
more than perfunctory it naturally reverted to the topic 
of the new paper — a topic that seemed almost as much 
a matter of interest to the man of medicine as to John 
himself. 

‘‘Well, my dear friend,” said the doctor, “you have 
not yet told me what name you are going to give the 
paper. Do you know I should like to be permitted the 
pleasure of naming it myself.” 

“Doctor, I am very sorry to say it, but you are 
doomed to disappointment,” said John. “I have prac- 
tically decided on a name which I believe no argument 
in the world could induce me to change.” 

“Ah, is that so?” said the doctor. “Well, isn’t it 
too bad that just when I have decided I would like to 
name a new^-born babe, I am denied that privilege, 
although in the years of my practice in the medical 
profession I have been made the recipient of many 
invitations to name babies, but have declined at all 
times ? I suppose, however, it is fate, the grim cruelty 
of thwarting fate.” 

He sighed and paused, but soon spoke again. 


i54 


TJiE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


“Come/’ he exclaimed, “tell me the name at once 
and break this horrible suspense.” 

“Shall I tell? Do you really insist on knowing it 
now ?” 

“If you are my friend I insist; yes, I insist.” 

“Well, then,” said John, “you will be satisfied. It 
is Conscience.” 

“Ah, indeed ! A pretty good name, truly. But I 
can beat it,” declared the physician. 

“If you can,” said John, “you will be the person 
who names it; and of all the world nobody would be 
more welcome in that role than yourself.” 

“Well, then, if I were to have a say I would go you 
one better, as it were, and name the paper The Voice 
of Conscience; or yet better. The Still Small Voice.” 

“Good, good! You win. Doctor, and you shall have 
your wish,” said John. “You have named the paper. 
Let it be The Still Small Voice. Notliing in the 
world could be better as a name for it.” 

Suddenly a change occurred in John’s looks and 
manner. It was a change which the doctor was quick 
to notice, though it probably would have escaped a 
less interested person. Another thing the physician 
observed was that John was looking intently out of 
the window. But the doctor did not know — could not 
have known — that the young man was gazing in dumb 
amazement at an automobile just then disappearing in 
the driveways of the park beneath the window ; did not 
know that the changed look in John’s usually pleasant 
face denoted astonishment, disgust, chagrin, anger — all 
caused by the startling discovery that a couple sitting 


THE SVVOUD OF THE ADVERTISER. I55 

side by side in the horseless carriage were none other 
than Verrazano Beverly and Algona Norwell. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

No more beautiful country is anywhere to be seen 
than the region of the small fresh water lakes of Wis- 
consin and Northwestern Illinois. It is a region that 
has a touch of Switzerland, without great altitudes ; 
and of Killarney, without the dreary unwooded wastes 
and wilds. 

Here abound the dells and the dwarf hilltops whose 
beauty and charm have more than a local fame. Every 
square league of land for hundreds of miles has its 
lake as a scenic setting for a wealth of' half-denuded 
woodland, or patches of primeval forestry Away to 
the north the inevitable lakes are larger ; the interven- 
ing strips of land more inaccessible. Here, segregated 
in magnificent country residences, along the wooded 
borders of the inland waters, the colonies of wealthy 
and fashionable families of Chicago and the North- 
west pass much of the summer time not spent in 
Europe. It is, perhaps, a good thing that they have 
among them in these exclusive retreats one of the 
modern wonders of the world. Like the pyramids of 
Egypt, it is a wonder of mortar and stone — mostly 
stone. It is a dog house built at a reputed cost of 
$1,000,000 by the wife of a Chicago billionaire mer- 
chant. 

“How much better that she should have spent this 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 57 

money even on favored dogs than keep it hoarded,” is 
oft^n said of this particular kennel and its mistress. 

Ah, but is it her money though? Or was not some 
of it — perhaps the larger portion of it — the money 
which the principles of eternal justice would proclaim 
to be the rightful share of numerous gangs of work- 
ingmen, be they under-fed or over-fed on the wage 
that they obtained. But that is another question 
— a question that may be destined to remain a thorn 
in the flesh for generations yet unborn. 

For certain esoteric causes, euphemistically named 
business reasons, Verrazano Beverly exchanged the 
use of his house at Oconomowoc this year for that of 
another wealthy individual’s summer home. Dove 
Cottage, at Elmodoc. 

It may be said instanter that Elmodoc village is a 
pretty place. Nothing to surpass it in rustic attrac- 
tiveness could be found even in the whole wide zone 
of the Illinois-Wisconsin lakeland region. Dove Cot- 
tage is in Wisconsin territory, just across the state 
line from Elmodoc, which is in Illinois. Each is dis- 
tant from the other not more than a mile in a straight 
line; but, as the rustice roads wind, round and round, 
not less far apart than five statutory miles. Both 
places were spoken of as equally distant from Chicago 
— about sixty miles Northwest by North, or one hour’s 
ride by rail. 

Much of the history of Elmodoc is bound up with 
an anecdote having to do with certain somewhat cele- 
brated trade rivalries between a trio of butchers who 
did business there when the village was still young. 


158 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

It is the village tradition that the triangular trade 
rivalries culminated in some entertaining incidents. 

In that day and generation — so the story goes— one 
Farr of Chicago was the particular pork packer whose 
sausages were deemed the best in the market. So one 
of the butchers, a native American, thought he was 
stealing a march on his competitors when he hung out 
this sign over his meat shop : 

“Sausage by Farr.” 

Above the shop-door of the second butcher, said to 
be a Jew, appeared, a few days after the arrival of the 
first signboard, the following legend: 

“The best sausage by far.” 

But the third butcher, a shrewd and resourceful 
Irishman, completely outwitted his business competi- 
tors with the following sign, which he emblazoned 
over his “market” across the street from his rivals: 

“Sausage far better than the best by far.” 

Dove Cottage, though “across the state line,” was 
the pride of Elmodoc. Enclosing the cottage was 
Grove Acre farm, a very pretty tract of land about one 
mile square, all nicely wooded and beautifully undu- 
lating; wild and uncultivated for the most part, but 
perhaps more attractive in nature's verdant garb than 
it could be in any other state. 

Along the western border of the farm was one of 
the limpid, sparkling fresh-water lakes of the region. 
It was called Psyche Lake by a recent mistress of 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 59 

Dove Cottage, but from time immemorial the country 
people round about had another name for it — a name 
of Indian origin, though strangely and unusually in- 
appropriate. 

Scarcely a mile long and not more than half a mile 
wide, this small body of water nevertheless had many 
fascinations. It abounded in excellent fish in summer, 
and with ice for the ice-harvesters from Chicago in 
winer. Along one portion of its shores, which were 
gravel-strewn and free from weeds, save the giant 
bulrushes, very large and lengthy sheds had been built 
for storage of the ice crops for Chicago’s summer 
needs. From these sheds the piers and pontoons for 
the use of the gangs of ice cutters had been built far 
into the lake. With these pontoons as rendezvous, 
hundreds of men and boys and girls of the surround- 
ing farms and villages came daily to the lake to ply 
their midsummer avocation — angling with rod and 
line for white fish, bass and trout. 

It is now sundown, just the evening hour when the 
fishing parties began to arrive in multitudes at the 
lake shore. Many in the throngs went forth in row 
boats, upon the placid surface of the crystal waters. 
Others fished from vantage points besides the bram- 
bles and underbrush upon the banks. Still others un- 
moored small adjustable pontoons, which on occasion 
were floated out for some hundreds of feet into the 
lake and easily made into sundry comfortable piers or 
platforms on which small groups of anglers safely find 
seats. It was the tradition that once upon a time a 
former owner of Dove Cottage pushed from one of 


I60 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

these navigable pontoons into the lake water his wife, 
an aspiring authoress, because he was jealous of the 
hero depicted by her in the pages of a new book she - 
was reading to him as he fished. It was read next time 
in a divorce court, the husband’s reputed push on the 
pontoon having failed to make him a widower. 

In the work of laying out Dove Acre farm, with the 
cottage or lodge that was the gem of the whole dis- 
trict, all the pretty natural effects of rusticity had been 
maintained, while still others were created by the 
efforts of landscape gardeners. 

A spacious rose garden, well sheltered beneath the 
hilltops, had been established on the water’s edge. 
Here were now in bloom all the seasonable flowers, 
with a few that were belated. But in keeping with its 
name of the Rose garden, roses truly held the chief 
place in this gorgeous creation of outdoor floriculture. 
Roses red and roses white; yellow roses and all other 
autumnal roses were here in beauteous bud or glowing 
blossom. Interspersed among the rose bushes were 
asters and chrysanthemums of rare splendor, raising 
aloft their flowering heads like tall sentinels on guard 
lest the intrusion of the kissing dew drops should 
cause the blushes in the rosehearts to become too deep 
for finest beauty. A few sunflowers were scattered 
through the garden, and these were bowing salutes 
toward the waning orb of day. Similar obeisance to 
the setting sun was being rendered by the asters in 
their varied hues. Invariably these were bending 
their fluffy crests toward the rose tints now in the 
western sky. Honeysuckle, both red and white, and 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. l6l 

phlox and hollyhock and mignonette and wisteria and 
ivy and sweet-elyssam were buttressing the garden 
walls as a setting for the roses and the rest. 

A bower or shady summer-house of wisteria stood 
at one end of the garden ; a bower of honeysuckle at 
the other end ; but in the middle was an arbor of red 
roses, beneath which was a rustic, rotunda seat of 
hirchwood unstript of its scraggy bark. 

Upon the seat and floor of this floral arbor were 
scattered the dying leaves of new-blown roses, and of 
rosetree branches freshly plucked — unmistaken evi- 
dence of recent visitors. Not a soul now was to be seen 
in the place. But a close examination disclosed the pres- 
ence of an automobile standing half-hidden amid some 
lilac bushes besides the rear wall of this beautiful gar- 
den of blossoms so lavishly scented sweet. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


162 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

A quest for the autoniobilists in the rose . garden 
would have been fruitless. They are not there now. 
But a glance across the slopes of the lawn would have 
revealed them seated beneath the russet grapevines 
trailing upon the roof and stanchions of the pretty 
rustic villa’s broad veranda. They are two — a 
pretty girl in simple dress and a somewhat cadaverous 
man sitting by her side on the porch steps. Is it nec- 
essary to tell their names? Verrazano Beverly and 
Algona Norwell. 

Behind the couple, and holding a tray of cups from 
which steamed aromatic tea, was a bespectacled and 
bewigged old lady, the housekeeper left over by the 
former householder until the newcomer should take 
possession. On the kindly face of this solitary attend- 
ant was a quizzical smile, betokening her wonder as 
to what manner of man was this who had arranged to 
occupy her master’s house early in the summer, but 
never had occupied it at all, and had not spent more 
than a few hours a week there since the day he ac- 
quired temporary sovereignty in the lovely country 
place. But Oneida Hempstead had decided not to 
worr)^ over those things. She had not been long in 
these parts, and during a life-time of domestic service 
in esthetic Boston she had learned the wisdom of not 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 163 

Speculating too much about the affairs of the rich and 
powerful ones of the world. She was happy here in 
the exclusiveness and quietude of country life, with 
many sub-servants and the use of a fine equipage that 
Mr. Beverly had discarded temporarily in favor of a 
rouged and ruffled French automobile. 

What she could not cease wondering about, how- 
ever, was why this tremendously rich man, of very 
mature age, should have been willing to invite un- 
favorable gossip by association with the manifestly un- 
sophisticated country girl who was his companion on 
this occasion. 

Ah, perhaps, after all, there was an explanation of 
many things in this incident! Did it not tend to con- 
firm the vague rumors that had percolated hither about 
the estrangement said to have occurred in the Beverlys’ 
marital life over the capers cut by the head of the 
house with many of the young women in the gay world 
of swift society? What a pitiful lot for Mrs. Bev- 
erly, probably a neglected and cruelly abused wife? 
And this, too, would afford an explanation of Mrs. 
Beverly’s failure to be seen abroad at any time in the 
company of her husband. She had not visited Dove 
Cottage except rarely and always at times when her 
husband was away in the far west or the east, and 
she never remained over night in the place. 

It was all very sad, so sad that Mrs. Hempstead for- 
got that the tea was growing cold in the delicately 
hand-painted cups of Dresden ware. She had re- 
peatedly called Mr. Beverly’s attention to the fact 


164 THE SWORD OF THE ADV^ERTISER. 

that the tea was ready ; but her words either were 
perfunctorily answered or ignored altogether. 

His command to his housekeeper had been that she 
serve tea in person from a tray on the porch steps, 
where he sat 'with his fair companion. So Oneida 
Hempstead stood there in the background of the long 
rambling piazza, waiting and positively watching — 
yea, watching and patiently waiting. 

She ventured at last to approach nearer, and she held 
out toward the master a cup of the tea. She was sur- 
prised and almost shocked to find that his hands were 
engaged — they were holding the hands of the girl at 
his side. 

With some embarrassment he said, as he disengaged 
his hands and accepted the cup that cheers: 

^‘That will do, Mrs. Hempstead, you can now go; 
we don’t need any more tea.” 

He handed the cup he had accepted to his com- 
panion, who the housekeeper saw was a victim just 
then of great emotion — trembling almost as a tem- 
pest-tossed aspen leaf, though the air was delightfully 
refreshing and balmy. 

The housekeeper turned to go, but before disap- 
pearing in the doorway she yielded to temptation, after 
the manner of Lot’s wife. She cast backward a dis- 
dainful look at the temporary master of the manor. 
Instantly her disdain was converted to a stronger feel- 
ing — she almost screamed with indignation as she saw 
the antiquated roue impress a lingering kiss on the 
limply yielded hand of that sweet-faced girl. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


165 


CHAPTER XXV. 

If the motive springs of Algona Norwell’s actions 
during the day now drawing to a close could be ana- 
lyzed adequately it would be found that pique and dis- 
appointment and jealousy over John Lodge’s supposed 
indifference toward her had to do, even more than her 
poverty, with driving her to the course she pursued 
in taking a dangerous risk for the sake of the distrac- 
tions found in the fascinating excitements of life amid 
alluring environments of riches and the pleasant things 
that riches bring. 

When she wrote the letter in which she poured out 
some of her proud soul’s most precious secrets to John 
Lodge, she fully intended to keep the tryst then 
made with him for the following morning at the rail- 
road station. But it chanced that unobserved by John 
himself, or the others involved in the thrilling episode, 
she had been a silent and breathless spectator of 
John’s fine deed of bravery in bounding upon the car- 
riage of the fashionably dressed ladies in Prairie ave- 
nue and rescuing them from death. At first Algona 
had no notion as to who the fine ladies were, but she 
recognized the sentimental debutante at the moment 
John succeeded in reining up the runaway steeds. In 
the glances of this pink bud of fashion’s cult Algona 


1 66 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

again saw the indications of emotion more ten- 
der and profound than mere gratitude. She also 
thought that John’s manner was responsive. His notice 
Algona had avoided at the time for the reason that 
she did not deem it wise to be detected as a spectator 
of the rescue. Perhaps also she could not bear to 
think that she might discover John looking with too 
much interest upon the face and form of this beauti- 
ful young butterfly of fashion and wealth. So she 
had turned quickly from the scene and disappeared in 
a side street off the avenue, leaving the rescued mem- 
bers of the party exchanging congratulations with 
each other and extending thanks to the rescuer, while 
the doctor was just arriving in his automobile. 

It was not from mere caprice, then, but because of 
the jealousy and disappointment gnawing deep into 
her soul that she failed to meet John the morning 
after, and instead had sought the interview with the 
rich merchant whom John had manfully pummeled for 
her sake. 

• It happaned that Verrazano Beverly was a keen stu- 
dent of human nature— especially the feminine branch 
of the human family. He knew how to be bold, when 
boldness was likely to be a serviceable weapon with 
the sex. He also knew how to be suave, deferential 
and chivalrous, when a change of tactics was advis- 
able. 

Almost before she had realized whither her conver- 
sation with this man in his private office was drifting, 
he had divined the most precious secret of her soul — 
that she was in love with John Lodge. To win her 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 67 

away from that presumptuous young person would be 
sweet revenge. Why not try it. 

Yes, he would try. Nor would he waste any time 
about it. 

With well-chosen words of careless import he told 
smilingly how nice it is for young people to be in love, 
but how hard it was for a girl to obtain or hold love 
in Chicago unless she possessed fine clothes. But he 
hacf given lots of fine clothes away to pretty girls, just 
because he liked to see them look their prettiest. Their 
love he had not asked — would not ask — in return. 
All he expected of them was their thanks. He was 
ever very happy if he only felt sure that the girls so 
favored always would remember that he was their 
friend. No young swain now-a-days would love a 
girl long, unless she had good clothes and wore them 
becomingly. 

While the rich merchant had run on in this insidi- 
ous style of conversation Algona sat quietly listen- 
ing. She had been inoculated with the poison of his 
honeyed phrases and soon had forgotten nearly all 
the teachings she imbibed in the little church and 
the school at Blue Pigeon, as the wholesome and 
proper rules of life and conduct. 

Besides, had she not seen what fine clothes had done 
the day before? Had not their wearer held the inter- 
ested gaze of John Lodge in Prairie avenue while she 
— Algona Nor well — the cynosure of all young men’s 
eyes at Blue Pigeon — had failed to receive even a 
noticing glance from her heart’s one idol ? 

It all seenied very true. And then again it didn’t. 


1 68 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

Was it not all a dream? Might it not be that she was 
yet in Blue Pigeon — never had left it in fact? But 
she knows she is awake and here in his office in pri- 
vate audience with one of the richest men in all the 
world. She is fatigued and almost prostrated from 
hunger and the countless heart-rending experiences 
which she had encountered in her quest for work. 
But of these things she would not speak to this man. 
Her pride would not allow it. 

She was bewildered — dazed almost — as she listened 
to the merchant’s insinuating speech, in which he 
shattered all or nearly all of her girlish ideals. 

When he arose and said “Let us go- for a little out- 
ing in an automobile that I have ordered,” she did not 
hesitate, but mechanically prepared to follow wher- 
ever he might lead. 

He was quick to notice her involuntary movement 
of preparedness. His success was quicker and more 
complete than he had expected, and he smiled and 
smiled — yea, smiled all the more conspicuously as he 
realized that the full measure of his success would 
probably be a triumph of deep villainy — though he 
knew it by another name. 

“Step this way,” he said, “out through this secret 
door behind this folding tapestry.” 

They passed downward in the massive wall through 
an ample stairway, prismatically lighted, but whose 
very existence was a secret to nearly everybody except 
the merchant himself. 

On the floor below they entered another of the mer- 
chant’s private offices. * Thence they passed unseen 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 169 

through certain midwall passages and corridors that 
brought them within a few steps of a door through 
which they reached .the street. Here in charge of a be- 
leathered and deep-jerkined chauffeur the automobile 
was in waiting. 

With a few silver coins, hastily dropped in the 
chauffeur’s ready palm, this curiously rapacious man 
of the world dismissed that attendant. Then he was 
buoyant and gay. He felt that he was to have a hal- 
cyon time with innocence, youth and beauty. He^ had 
believed himself blase, satiated, irresponsive to any- 
thing the world could display in feminine manner or 
form. But how deceived he was in regard to his own 
faculties? How delightful to feel so young again? 

He felt like one rejuvenated. In the liquid eyes of 
this unsophisticated country maiden, with her fascin- 
ating smiles and wealth of glorious tresses, he be- 
lieved he had discovered a veritable fountain of youth, 
as potent and refreshing as that fabled spring so 
vainly sought for by Ponce De Leon, philosopher and 
traveler. 

Hd was soon seated in the hired automobile, with 
the pretty country girl by his side. 

"‘Let us take a spin through the parks,” he ex- 
claimed airly, as they were speeding in Van Buren 
street past the clubhouse where this same business 
man had been living most of the time for many years, 
and from whose windows John Lodge recognized him 
and his fair companion just at this very moment. 

"‘Oh, yes, let us go where we can see the tall trees 
and the foliage and the grass and the flowers, and 


170 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

hear the birds singing and the brooks babbling,” said 
Algona, half timidly, but with innocent enthusiasm 
for the things she had loved in the country and for 
which she now was beginning to feel homesick. 

‘‘All right, here goes to the rustic elysian fields,” 
said Verrazano Beverly, quite jauntily. 

Away they sped through the parks and boulevards. 
On reaching the splendid roadways of the north shore, 
beyond Lincoln Park, they went at a furious pace that 
soon took them to Fort Sheridan over that magnificent 
driveway, the automobilist’s via sacra, known as 
Sheridan Road. 

Thence the progress to Lake Forrest was lightning- 
like, and the Golf Links there were circled in the wide 
roadways, and Algona said she thought golf playing 
must be very nice. Her companion declared he would 
teach her the game some day in the near future. And 
away they rushed again. 

This time their course was inland, over real rustic 
lanes and by-ways, and in less than half an hour they 
pulled up beside the rose garden in Dove’s Acre. 

They wandered around a great deal, visiting the 
garden and rose arbors. They had lingered long on 
the broad rustic benches of the great rose-tree-covered 
summer house in the center of the garden. Here Al- 
gona pulled away the petals from many beautiful 
blossoms, silently counting the said petals in pursu- 
ance of the cherished feminine superstition and prac- 
tice as to the swain who may “love her or love her 
not.” She did this in a listless and troubled way that 
evinced her doubt as to the outcome. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I71 

Her companion was alert at her elbow. He read 
her thoughts, and at once took advantage of her state 
of mind. 

He began to talk of love. He at first proceeded cau- 
tiously, like one groping in the dark for discovery of 
the girl’s mental bias, if she had any. He became sat- 
isfied she had such bias, and he proceeded accordingly. 
His discovery was that she is a girl with strong feel- 
ings, at once sentimental and spirited ; fond of poetry ; 
a hero- worshipper ; intense in her emotions and likely 
to be implacable in revenge. But he had dealt with 
others like her in these traits, and he would not be 
daunted by a schoolgirl. 

From the topic of love he soon diverted his con- 
versation to the subject of married life, insinuatingly 
insisting that the experience of society people proved 
that love cannot subsist after marriage. He asserted 
that the very happiest and luckiest of the poorer girls 
in the world today are they who have the love of some 
rich man whom they know how to amuse, after his 
own wife has fancied she has had reason to despise 
him as false and faithless in his domestic love. 

When he uttered this sentiment he fancied he de- 
tected that it startled the girl. He laughed aloud, 
making light of the whole topic and proclaiming the 
utterance to be merely a stock joke of the smart 
society people of the time. 

But the poison of his sayings had sunk deep in the 
girl’s mind. He saw the effect of his daring words and 
he brazenly resumed his theme. 

‘'Let me call to your notice just one little matter to 


iy2 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

illustrate a point or two on this subject of love and 
marriage,” he said. “All those industrious, pollen- 
laden bees you have been admiring among the flowers 
and clover blossoms of this country place are not 
working for wives, but for a queen who rules them all 
in common. Well, do you suspect how true it is that 
they would never work so hard to please a wife as 
they do to please this mysterious queen of all.” 

“Well, sir, where is the point you would have me 
see in all that?” said the girl, with some hesitancy, 

“Why, of course that I would like to have you for 
my queen.” 

Deep blushes suffused the girl’s cheeks, yet she said 
with a silvery little laugh:, 

“But, surely, there is another?” 

This merchant had one spark of honor left. He 
remained silent now. 

Just at this moment a weird chorus of katydids and 
bullfrogs and whip-poor-wills arose from the bul- 
rushes fringing the pretty lake. 

“Come, let us go away from here, those noises de- 
press me,” said Algona. 

They arose and proceeded up the grassy terrace 
toward the house. A ribbon that Algona had for 
some time been twirling nervously around her fingers 
now fell upon the sward. Quite gallantly the mer- 
chant restored it to her, but not before his keen eyes 
detected the monogram “J. L.” embroidered on it 
amid sprigs of four-leaved shamrocks and bunches of 
violets and j)urple lilacs. Was it a keepsake given to 
her by that youth, John Lodge? Or had she made it 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 73 

for him and retained it because of jealousy? True', it 
seemed worn; but her twrling of it in her fingers, 
dainty though they were, may have given the ribbon a 
somewhat frayed or stained appearance. 

By this time the couple had arrived on the veranda 
where we have found Mrs. Hempstead serving them 
with tea. 

Is it to be wondered at that this frail girl, as yet 
scarcely more than a child, was almost prostrated 
with this day’s excitements? 

And now, as she partook of the much needed re- 
freshments, handed to her by her polite companion, 
shall we condemn her because we have seen how at 
this critical moment of her young life she failed to 
spurn him, or even to withdraw her hand, when he 
raised those warm finger-tips to his cold, thin lips? 


174 


THE SWORD OF TFIR ADVERTISER. 


\ 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

‘Tt will take us about two hours to get back to 
Chicago/’ said the merchant with studied seriousness. 
‘‘Of course, we have lots of time and it will be a 
charming run, as the evening will be moonlight and 
perfectly glorious. But I want to pay another visit 
to the rose garden, so as to be able to gather a bou- 
quet for the sweetest creature in the world — the girl 
whose smile is like a glimpse of heaven.” 

“And who is she?” asked his companion, demurely. 

“Why, yourself of course; who else could it be? 
Ah, how I like to be among the roses ; sub rosa, sub 
rosa.” 

“What does sub rosa mean?” 

“Why it means under the rose and a few other 
things.” 

“What are the other things?” 

“Oh, you pretty squirrel, you must not press that 
question now.” 

And with careless steps he led the way to the rose 
garden, laughing and continuing his pretty compli- 
ments on the way. 

When Mrs. Hempstead came on the veranda for 
the tea cups she heard the twain chattering away in 
the rose garden, though the master’s voice was the 
only one distinctly heard. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 175 

• It would be hard for a casual eavesdropper to de- 
cide whether the housekeeper was uttering prayers or 
imprecations as she again retreated into the great 
doorway beneath the grand staircase of this rustic 
palace. 

After some time she came again to the door, but 
quickly withdrew into the shadows on seeing the auto- 
mobile still standing beside the fence of the rose- 
garden. 

In half an hour she came again. This time the auto- 
mobile was nowhere to be seen. She shut up the 
house and prepared to retire to her quarters near the 
rooms of the house maids and the other retainers of 
the establishment. Now she was engaged in some 
more mutterings. They are more audible than before, 
and unmistakably are imprecations on the head of the 
house of Beverly. 


176 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

It happened that on this particular evening a fear- 
ful rainstorm, accompanied by thunder and lightning 
and a furious gale, swept over the southwestern por- 
tion of Lake Michigan, involving Chicago and the 
country round about in a mantle of fire and deluge. 

Whenever the storm king lets loose the winds of 
heaven in a hurricane of respectable proportions per- 
haps quite a few poetic souls even in commerce-ridden 
Chicago find time to allow themselves to become lost, 
mentally, in the fascination which elemental disturb- 
ances of the violent atmospheric kind are wont to ex- 
ercise secretly, or even manifestly, over persons who 
are unimpressionable to most other influences. At all 
events John Lodge was of the number of the Chica- 
goans of the period for whom the sudden and terrific, 
though generally somewhat brief, wind storms cus- 
tomary in Chicago and vicinity had this not unusual 
fascination. 

It had often been his duty o’nights, as 'a reporter, 
to go for news to the lofty quarters of the official 
weather forecaster in the “belfry ”of the Auditorium 
tower. He had formed a close friendship with the 
“weather man,” as the Government forecaster is pop- 
ularly styled, and frequently when tempests were 
blowing most fiercely the newsgatherer took pleasure 
in lingering in this steep observatory and upon its diz- 
ziest openair balconies. He had the entree at all 
times to the sheerest altitudes of the tower and the 
belfry. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 77 

He is there this very night — there alone and in a 
mood verging on the pessimistic. He had come pri- 
marily to watch the splendid spectacle of the lightning 
in its play behind the clouds. Instinctively he had 
taken the “leeward” or western side of the topmost 
balcony on the dome, a stand that was his favorite 
“roost” on those occasions — the nights when fierce 
tornadoes blew. 

As the balcony runs all around the tower at this 
point, John Lodge was able to select an angle of 
vantage from which to receive full in his fine face the 
cooling advance gusts of the hurricane gathering upon 
the north shore of the lake. Not yet had the rain be- 
gun to fall in Chicago, but the windcurrents were 
blowing and eddying around the tower at a tremen- 
dous velocity. Away behind the banks of overhanging 
ebony clouds, visible in the distance, the dazzling ef- 
fects of the electric fluids, shooting about zigzag 
through the firmament, and earthward to the horizon 
line, aflPorded a spectacle alike gorgeous and impres- 
sive. 

It had not been John Lodge’s purpose to remain 
long in the tower this night, or keep any lengthy vigil 
for rare atmospheric phenomena in this particular 
storm. He had been in the neighborhood of the 
Auditorium building when the first premonitory 
gusts of the approaching aerial disturbance were felt 
in the downtown streets. Although devoid of storm 
clothes or other similar protection, he had mounted to 
the tower — by passenger elevator and then by climb- 
ing — so as to take a fleeting look into the face of 


178 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the storm as it should break and burst from its celes- 
tial moorings. He expected that rain would soon de- 
scend in torrents, and he waited to retreat before it. 
But, as he watched, he realized that rain was falling 
like waterspouts within a hundred feet of him to the 
northward; that it had been so falling for some time, 
but yet had come no nearer to where he stood upon 
the balcony. Instead, the nearest fringe of the area 
of precipitation seemed moving inland and away from 
him toward the southwest. He now saw clearly that 
there had been a cloudburst and that its pathway is 
from northeast to southwest across the lakeshore and 
the northern portion of the city. He was aware that 
the north side and the west side were doomed to bear 
the brunt of the hyperborean visitation and that the 
south side, including the spot whereon he stood, would 
escape with a dry tempest. 

Here was a rare chance to observe from midair a 
spectacle that is unusual and ought to be quite thrill- 
ing — the visible effect of a cloudburst observed at 
night under the coruscations of the storm of elec- 
tricity over head and the lurid glow of the city’s 
lights beneath. Yea, assuredly, it should prove 
a spectacle worth seeing, thought John, and he de- 
cided that he would prolong his unique vigil. He 
steadied his poise and balance, reassuring himself of 
the steadfastness and safety of his footing as well as 
of his hold upon the balcony rail. Then, as he gazed 
wistfully ahead, he felt almost as buoyant as the 
swirling winds. He experienced the inspirational 
bent of the moment and the rich reserve fund of his 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


179 


poetic treasures began to well upward in his memory. 
Already he was murmuring verses, as follows: 

“The sky is changed! and such a change! Oh night, 

And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 

Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
Of a dark eye in woman !’’ 

He paused. It was but a momentary pause and his 
thoughts were of Algona. He resumed at the next 
stanza of the famous poem that he was quoting : 

“And this is in the night: most glorious night! 

Thou wert not sent for slumber! Let me be 

A sharer in thy fierce and far delight— 

A portion of the tempest and of thee! 

How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 

And the big rain Comes dancing to the earth ! 

And now again ’tis black — and now the glee 
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth. 

As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.” 

Again he paused, only to begin again. His musings 
now found voice as follows: 

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind 

As man’s ingratitude.” 

“As woman’s,” he murmured, in low hushed ac- 
cents that in sound were almost as plaintive as the 
rushing winds. Once more he was absorbed in deep 
reflection, his thoughts being concerned again with 
Algona Norwell. 

He wondered where she was at this moment — won- 
dered about a great many things in reference to the 
country maiden and Verrazano Beverly. Where had 


i8o the s\voih> of the advertiser. 

he taken her in the automobile? What would be her 
fate? In her special circumstances of want, misery 
and desperation would she not be an easy victim for a 
ruthless, conscienceless gay deceiver of the much too 
numerous type of Verrazano Beverly? 

While he had been lost in his gazings and musings, 
the lightning had become so vivid and spectacular in 
its chasings behind the clouds that he became silent 
with awe and wonderment. Rarely or never had he seen 
a spectacle at once so thrilling and so beautiful. It 
was as if he were standing in some vast outdoor arena 
or amphitheatre, with a great segment of the heavens 
for a stage, the cloud-banks for scenery and the real 
ftghtning and thunder taking the place of the mimic 
things of stageland. In a word, he was beholding the 
mammoth kaleidoscopic views of nature’s magic lan- 
tern. 

It had been a custom with him in the course of 
many atmospheric phenomena of this kind to look 
into the very eye of storm and tempest with a power- 
ful five-inch telescope that he had been accorded per- 
mission to keep in this very tower for purposes of ob- 
servation and study. He now either forgot the instru- 
ment’s presence in the belfry behind him, or he did 
not wish to use it at this time. Anyhow he stood 
there for some moments in silence. It may be that he 
is completely fascinated by the electric display and the 
hurtling thunder. Or it may be that what he saw in 
such impressive pictures before his eyes enforced 
upon his thought the storms and terrors of the swift 
career into whose vortex he fancied he now clearly 


TilK SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. l8l 

foresaw that Miss Norwell would be drawn by the 
stress and strife of wordly affairs beyond the range 
of her control. 

From the zigzag and spiral shapes of lightning the 
electric display in the heavens had now passed almost 
wholly into that form of nature’s phenomena known 
as “sheet lightning.” For seconds together — in fact 
for minutes — the whole northern sky was in a glow so 
intermittent as to seem almost constant. 

What struck John as being somewhat peculiar was 
that the lightning was not wholly of the pale-yellow, 
or white and wan variety, to be expected when the 
electric fluid illuminates the heavens in blanket-sheet 
quantities. It had an admixture of the red and violet 
and green and saffron tints of an autumnal sunset, a 
gorgeous rainbow or the aurora borealis. Yea, it even 
seemed to hold amid its changeling folds a large num- 
ber of objects that appeared like perfect images or re- 
flections of houses, trees and streets. What was still 
more extraordinary, John Lodge, now thought that he 
recognized, even with the unaided vision of the naked 
eye, not a few of the celestial images as exact like- 
nesses of scenic beauty spots along Chicago’s north 
shore suburbs, boulevards, parks and driveways. 

“It is an ele(?tric mirage!” he muttered, in awe, 
“that phenomenon whose possibility science may be 
thought to have indicated, but of whose actual appear- 
ance there is yet no record in history or authentic 
report. Ah, there it is again — this time showing the 
images of the barracks at Fort Sheridan. Aha, there 
they are, as I live. Yea, the perfect images of the 


1 82 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

barracks, with their unmistakable tower, and of the 
mess-hall and drill-hall and the officers’ club and their 
residential quarters in the trio of pretty, garden-like 
‘loops’ or parks. Let me see, if I am really right — 
whether I* have made a discovery of some value to 
science and likely to increase the sum total of human 
knowledge — or whether, in fact, I am not a blooming 
idiot.” 

He stepped from the balcony into the tower, and 
presently reappeared with the telescope in his hands. 
It was, as we have said, a powerful instrument with 
a lens of the five-inch diameter type, the kind through 
and by which a great deal of the momentous astronom- 
ical discoveries had been made. Though it was so 
lightly mounted as to be easily portable, its equipment 
included a modern photographic device attached to the 
tube near the eye-piece. Instinctively John Lodge 
touched the snap shot spring of this device to see if 
it was in working order. Its emphatic click, gave the 
affirmative answer that he expected. Then he leveled 
the instrument at what he called the electric mirage 
in the heavens — the play of the lightning having in- 
creased rather than subsided in volume and large dark 
objects like those that John had identified remaining 
as clearly outlined as before in the panorama of the 
illumined firmament. 

What he saw with the telescope amazed him. An 
almost perfect picture of the topography of the north 
shore for miles was reflected in the sky upon the shift- 
ing curtains of the lightning sheets. 

“Aha, sure enough that is the shore line of Evans- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 183 

ton/’ he said, “with the campus of the Northwestern 
University, its buildings, its towers and minarets, and 
even the unpretentious quarters of the ‘co-eds’ ’ de- 
partment with its dorways clearly defined and the win- 
dows of its dormitories. But, stay, what is this here 
toward the zenith? Why, a section of Lincoln Park, 
with the zoological house and the conservatory, and all 
as plain as the noonday sun. And — ah, there is 
the Potter Palmer castle on the Lake Shore Drive. 
And speeding along there on the lake front — well, 
what is it, anyhow ? Why, upon my honor and 
my life, ’tis an automobile ; and in it are two 
persons. Don’t I know them? Yes, I certainly 
have seen them before. What ? How ? Can it be pos- 
sible? It certainly is she — Miss Norwell. And that 
man by her side is — yea, is Beverly and none else. 
And what? — yes, he is kissing her. Oh, what a per- 
fect scoundrel — what a deep-dyed ” 

A click of the snapshot attachment on the telescope 
startled John Lodge. In his agitation he had touched 
the camera button accidentally. No doubt, a picture 
of the cloud-picture — with the automobile and its oc- 
cupants and many other reflected objects in the mirage 
— had been “taken” and could be developed subse- 
quently in the photographic plate of the appliance at- 
tached to the telescope. But just then a gust of wind, 
rushing forth from the fringe of the storm, carried 
ofif and swept away the telescope — with the photo- 
graphic attachment and the rest — out of the loosened 
grasp of John Lodge’s hands. And the instrument 
fell into the abyss at John’s feet ; fell and was watched 


184 the sword of the advertiser. 

by John in a wistful manner as it whirled down and 
away out of sight; fell until it struck, yea, struck 
something that caused a loud noise and a crash of 
glass on housetop, courtyard or alley-pavement — John 
knew not which. From the depths of the darkness he 
lifted his eyes again to the heavens. No more did he 
see the electric mirage, or any electric display what- 
ever. 

Where before was the brilliant glow of the electric 
fluid, and the shadowed images, not a star or aught 
else was now to be observed. A wind storm, more 
fierce a thousand-fold than before, had now arisen and 
was howling dismally, with an accompaniment of rain 
and hail that at last began to patter on the balcony 
where John stood, and upon the overhanging roof 
above his head. Inky darkness had possessed the 
whole city and the firmament, casting a somber man- 
tle of gloom and terror along the tornado’s path — the 
white round hailstones, as large as walnuts, bringing 
to the windows of countless stores, factories and 
dwellings the same measure of havoc and destruction 
that the telescope’s fall must have brought to any 
mirage-image of automobile and automobilists that 
may have been photographed upon the sensitized plate 
under the luminous exposure of the accidental snap- 
shot. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


i8s 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Before the storm had yet entirely spent itself, a 
pretty girl of slim and graceful figure, and upon whose 
face was an expression af sadness, trouble or despair, 
could be seen in a semi-crouching position within the 
concealing shadows of a dark doorway in the heart 
of the down-town district — Jackson boulevard, near 
Michigan avenue. It seemed clear that she was await- 
ing the arrival of an escort, temporarily absent ; or 
was expecting to recognize or see some kindly person 
from whom she might inquire the way. 

Beyond question she had been caught in the tem- 
pest. Her shivering form, dejected mien and badly 
spattered raiment showed that she had been storm- 
bound. Her pale, wan face and generally down-cast 
appearance would have made her a perfect picture of 
misery — only that the world will not agree to call 
beauty in distress by any other name than fascinating. 

Before her sad eyes, in which traces of recent weep- 
ing could be detected, a goodly number of vehicles, 
weathering indififerently so fierce a storm, was passing 
from time to time along the streets. She watched them 
all intently, but more particularly the cabs and car- 
riages, whether these chanced to be horse-drawn or 
horseless. Occasionally she protruded her head from 
the sheltering alcove of the doorway as if to make 


1 86 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

sure that the person or persons she probably was 
awaiting should not pass unknown to her. It seemed, 
liowever, that the passing automobiles were especially 
the objects of her vigilant scrutiny. ' 

As might have been expected the presence, unes- 
corted and at somewhat a late hour in the evening, of 
so decidedly attractive a girl alone in the streets did 
not escape masculine eyes. Indeed, before she was a 
minute in this place of shelter she was the target for 
the glances of several men, young and old, as well as 
neither young nor old. Perhaps they were glances of 
spontaneous admiration. But they were bold and ag- 
gressive, seeming to search for a look of recognition ; 
or a challenge in return. Cheerless and distressed 
though she was, the battery of eyes aroused her to 
self-consciousness and forced her to retreat to a neigh- 
boring drugstore from whose sheltering portals she 
continued her vigil. 

Almost as suddenly as it started did the storm sub- 
side. It abated all at once. Then it ceased completely. 
Other persons who had taken shelter in the store or its 
doorway had left, or were preparing to leave. But 
the young lady did not move. She still stood inside 
the door, but near it, and seemed to be as absorbed as 
before in her mysterious vigil. 

It was a fruitful quest. She recognized somebody 
approaching, but probably not the right person. She 
tries to hide in an angle of the vestibule, but is too 
late. John Lodge enters. 

‘‘Ah, Miss Norwell, I fear you were out-of-doors 
in that awful storm?” he said, as he courteously 


1 

I 

I 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 87 

greeted the girl. In his voice and manner some hesi- 
tancy was evinced. He had not expected or sought 
this meeting, but his chivalrous and gentlemanly in- 
stincts held him up. It startled and amazed him to 
see that the feminine mirage-image among the clouds 
was clothed exactly like this girl, and therefore must 
have been her real, true likeness. 

“Why yes, indeed; it is only too true I got caught, 
and was drenched very badly before I found this wel- 
come shelter,” replied the girl, with manifest timidity. 

“You are a stranger here and I should be glad to 
be of service to you ; I waited almost an hour for you 
today at the railroad depot,” declared the young man. 

“Why, didn’t you get word that I could not come?” 

“Yes, but I would have waited several hours more 
rather than have left without hearing from or seeing 
you.” 

Noticing that the girl bore a troubled look and that 
she averted her gaze every time he looked her full 
in the face, John Lodge now began to feel somewhat 
puzzled as to how he might continue the conversa- 
tion, or what course he should pursue. But she ended 
his dilemma and her own embarrassment by inviting 
him to escort her to “some other drugstore of the 
neighborhood.” 

They went out-doors, but had not proceeded fifty 
paces when they met two uniformed policemen bearing 
in their strong arms the maimed' and almost lifeless 
body of a nicely-dressed young lady, in appearance a 
shopgirl or stenographer. 

“She jumped from a high window to escape a man 


1 88 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

who had lured her into that vile, den upstairs there/' 
was what John overheard an indignant citizen say to 
some spectators crowding in the wake of the little 
procession. It was John’s belief that Miss Norwell 
failed to catch the meaning of the citizen's words. 
But in that he must have been mistaken. 

She wept silent but not unnoticed tears, and all at 
once the gift of speech seemed to fail her. 

Perhaps because she had changed her mind, she 
failed to lead the way to another drug store. With- 
out exchanging a word these two unhappy, young 
people, whom fate was to keep far apart in the future, 
now walked slowly side by side for several blocks 
down Michigan avenue to the south, until they arrived 
in front of the Young Women’s Homing Club. With 
a great effort to hide her emotion the girl now said : 

“Mr. Lodge, please let me take your handkerchief 
for a moment ; I seem to have lost mine.” 

“Certainly,” he replied, as he complied with the 
request. 

Casting a glance upward at the great doorway of 
the building before her, the girl spoke in a faltering 
voice, though with an unmistakable note of sadness. 
And what she said was this : 

“Well, I have not yet. stopped at this harbor of 
safety for young women from out of town, but I sup- 
pose I may hope to find shelter here for one night.” 

“No doubt about that — none whatever,” replied 
John. “I am sure you need have no hesitation at all 
in that matter; but lest your tirnidity should be em- 
barrassing to yourself and all concerned, I want you 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 1 89 

to take this money as a little gift from me. It was 
so short-sighted in me not to have inquired long ago, 
in a respectful and thoughtful way, as to the state of 
your affairs.’’ 

“Oh, I must not be a bother to you, Mr. Lodge,” 
murmured the girl, “but I certainly am very thankful 
and I shall repay you, if I must indeed accept this 
great sum of money.” 

“Please be good enough not to refuse it,” urged 
John. “Believe me I can spare it. I have money 
enough besides; too much money, in fact. And I 
know no better way in all the world to use a surplus 
of wealth than in helping deserving people, especially 
weak women, the fair ones known as the gentler sex.” 

“Mr. Lodge, you are so kind and good, I really do 
not know what to say; but, if I accept this money, it 
is to be on the understanding that it must simply be 
a loan, which I will pay back at the first opportunity.” 

“Well, then, let it be a loan,” responded John, with 
spirit. “It is only $ioo, and I would be glad to let 
you have many times that sum. It will be enough to 
maintain you till you get work. And let me impress 
on you another matter. You need not any more seek 
work anywhere. In a month from now at the farth- 
est — perhaps much sooner — I shall be in business for 
myself on a very large scale. Then I will be glad to 
give you employment, either as a cashier or clerk or 
in some other capacity. Please remember also that I 
will be at your service any time you may care to com- 
municate with me. You have my address. For some 
days I shall be very busy, arranging to get out my 


190 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


newspaper. You see, I have just fallen heir to a lot 
of money from my uncle and 1 want to help the over- 
burdened working people of the country by printing a 
newspaper in which the truth — and nothing but the 
truth — will be told about the employers who underpay 
their laboring people, but amass millions from others’ 
toil.” 

“No better, nobler man ever lived in the world than 
you, and ” 

“Why, not at all, not at all. Miss Norwell ; I shall 
simply try and do my duty, perform one man’s part 
in an attempt to uplift the world’s toiling masses 
into their rightful place in the circle of the brother- 
hood of man. Every good cause shall always have 
my advocacy and aid, and what could be a better work 
for humanity than in every possible way to help and 
encourage good, true, and pure and innocent ” 

“Oh, Mr. Lodge, I have such a dreadful, nervous 
headache. I shall be awfully sick if I am any longer 
without rest. Won’t you please excuse me now?” 

“Certainly,” said John, “You must need rest. Don’t 
worry any more. Everything will be all right for 
you. Be of good cheer, and look at the bright side 
of things. Above all I would impress on you the 
great importance of not ” 

He paused. On his lips were burning words which, 
had he spoken them, would have conveyed a reference 
or query as to her meeting with Verrazano Beverly 
that day, and her outing trip in the automobile. 
But his sense of delicacy restrained John Lodge and 
the words were left unspoken. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I9I 

Perhaps his companion divined his thoughts. At 
all events she suddenly became so agitated and nerv- 
ous that John was alarmed. 

“I am detaining you beyond your strength?" he 
said. 

'‘No, not exactly that; but I have rung the bell in 
my excitement," she said. 

Her ring brought a quick response. The heavy 
door swung open and her escort assisted the girl up 
the stairs of the club house. She quickly ascertained 
that she would be received in this meritorious retreat 
for homeless women and girls. She bade John Lodge 
a final but somewhat stiff and formal adieu. She re- 
stored to him his handkerchief and entered the house. 

Scarcely had she disappeared than the embroidered 
hat-band which he had missed since the time of his 
encounter with the great merchant, fell at his feet. It 
had dropped out of his handkerchief — the handker- 
chief he had just received from the hand of Algona 
Norwell. 

Aha, she must have picked it up at the time of the 
encounter, thought John. Or perhaps she found it 
when, for some inexplicable reason of perverseness or 
folly, she revisited the tempter at the scene of his pun- 
ishment. It was clear she had been retaining it as a 
memento. But why did she now return it? Despite 
all that he knew, or had divined, the answer to this 
query was a great puzzle to John Lodge. He did 
not dream what her own answer would have been — 
that she could not deem herself worthy any longer 
to possess such a keepsake. 


192 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


John Lodge departed. His thoughts were so trou- 
bled he scarcely looked to. the right or to the left as 
he walked to his hotel a few blocks away. Had he 
looked he would have seen an automobile moving 
around at no great distance in the boulevard behind 
him. Had he looked still closer he probably would 
have recognized the solitary occupant of the horseless 
vehicle, if not the vehicle itself — a mammoth motorcar 
built in the shape of a huge green dragon, with 
fiery eyes and macerating, circular claws. The 
occupant was Beverly. He had arrived in the 
vicinity of the drugstore just as Algona de- 
spaired of his coming and was starting away 
with John Lodge. Mentally invoking impreca- 
tions on the head of the hostler, whose negligence 
had caused unforeseen delays at a 'mobile livery 
of the neighborhood, the merchant had found he had 
no recourse now but to watch and wait. He had a 
vivid remembrance of his first meeting with John 
Lodge and did not wish to invite another. So he fol- 
lowed the couple, taking care to keep at a safe dis- 
tance. And when he saw that the girl was to find 
shelter for the night at the Woman’s Homing Club 
instead of in the luxurious quarters he just now had 
been engaging for her — as his ‘‘niece” — at a fashion- 
able hotel other than his own favorite hostelry, he pa- 
tiently accepted the inevitable; registering, however, 
a mental vow that he would communicate with her 
by special messenger at once — or at least before sun- 
rise the next morning. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


193 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

In his offices on the ninth floor of the Unity Build- 
ing, where he had engaged temporary quarters pend- 
ing the arrangements for establishing his newspaper, 
John Lodge found among his mail matter next morn- 
ing the following letter: 

Midnight. 

Oh, Mr. Beverly, how could you have had the heart to 
treat me so — to desert me and leave me all alone at night 
in such an awful storm, and after all that happened? Ah, 
the tortures that I suffered ; not knowing where to go, as 
I had no money and feared that I would have to spend the 
whole night in those wet and terrible streets. 

How bewildered I am! My head is just bursting open 
with the pain and agony of doubt, suspense and terror. 

Really, I hope I will die. After this day, I don’t know 
that I want to live. The future holds nothing bright for 
me any more. I wish the dawn would come again. Now 
all is dark to me, as dark as this night will be and the 
recollection of this day. 

I don’t know what to think, do or say. It is all so dread- 
ful. To know — oh, the terror and the horror. I don’t 
know what it all can mean. 

And how happy I was in that beautiful country place, 
among the flowers and the birds. Everything there seemed 
so soothing and pleasant to me. It reminded me of my 
happy life in the woods, away from the big towns. And it 
took me back to the days when I played in a pretty prairie 
beneath big trees — a time of which I have only a faint recol- 


/ 


194 the sword of the advertiser. 


lection. But I know I was happy in that distant time. 
I also know I was happy in that beautiful place a few short 
hours aga Once I loved the woods and the trees and soli- 
tude. Now I feel that I can never love those dear, sweet 
things again. At least I know that I can never more love a 
rose or a rose garden. 

Ah, but you were so nice all the day. I forgot every- 
thing — forgot even the family troubles that drove me to this 
big city all alone. And I fully intended to tell you about 
those things. But I forgot — in fact, forgot everything in 
the happiness I found again amid scenes that recalled the 
years of my early childhood — the years passed among a 
strange but kindly people, whose dress, roving life, camp 
fires and cooking out of doors I have not known in later 
times. 

Ah, but what is to become of me now? 

I must not go to your office again. Perhaps I should 
have kept away. But, you know I wanted to explain, and 
to apologize for the unhappy occurrence of the day before. 

Until I know just what happened to you I will not believe 
you abandoned me purposely on such a night and under 
such circumstances. There must have been some accident, 
I know. I do so hope that you are well and that nothing 
terrible happened, if the real truth was — as I thought then 
and still think— that something went wrong with your own 
automobile, after you had exchanged it at the atuo-barn for 
the hired one on which we took the trip that I thought 
would be a pleasure always to remember, but which turned 
out — oh, so terrible for me. 

I know you will write to me, even if we are never to meet 
again. 

Unhappy, 


Algona. 


Indignation, anger, confusion, shame, horror, de- 
testation, surprise, disappointment, chagrin, sorrow. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


195 


grief, rage, despair — such were the varying emotions 
that struggled to assert themselves in John Lodge’s 
mind and bosom as he perused this letter and realized 
its meaning — that it was a manifestation of the blight 
of innocence and of the fell power of ill-spent wealth 
for the allurement, fascination and ruin of the pure- 
minded — of the womanly virtue that is the hope of 
the race and the most beautiful and noble of the 
world’s possessions. 

But despite all the struggling emotions of his soul 
John Lodge was outwardly calm and self-possessed. 

How he happened to be the recipient of such a let- 
ter he realized almost at once — or more correctly, as 
soon as he had mentally recovered from the first shock 
of the surprise and pain it caused him. It was clear 
that the missive must be one of two letters despatched 
simultaneously by the same unhappy writer, and by 
an accident or mistake, more common than is sus- 
pected, the letter meant for another had been sent to 
him. 

And the other letter — the one meant for him ? How 
about that? Why, of course it was clear that it had 
gone to the man for whom had been intended the one 
that came to him! And that person, so justly famed 
for his shrewdness and his natural ability to grasp 
and deal with afifairs, would at once become aware 
how the mishap had occurred, and would know be- 
yond all question into whose hands had fallen the let- 
ter meant for him ! xA.h, what unlooked for complica- 
tions here? 

What torment and fear for the merchant in the 


196 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

thoug that the secret of his recent baseness should 
become known. In this would be sweet revenge for 
John — if John were only revengeful, which he is not. 
Instead he is pitiful — his very soul burning out with 
the great unquenched fires of compassion and sym- 
pathy, charity and sorrow and forgiveness for the 
faults and follies of weak human nature. 

One thought, however, gave John some satisfaction 
as he reflected on the disheartening aspects of his con- 
nection with the affairs of this country girl. It was 
that her letter to him — the one which he felt sure was 
now in the hands of the man whom he had vainly 
punished for the sake of her honor — would almost 
certainly show to the whipped individual how respect- 
fully and unselfishly a trusting innocent girl might 
have been treated and should be treated. 

Ah, but might it not be that the man is lost to all 
sense of shame and gloats over the misdeeds that he 
probably calls his conquests? In that case the man is 
a demon, a reprobate, a degenerate, a beast, a scoun- 
drel and should be tarr 

But John’s reverie on this topic was interrupted by 
a ring at his telephone, followed by the information 
from the boy operating the office switchboard that 
‘^the receiving teller of the bank wished to have a 
word on the ’phone with Mr. Lodge.” 

A moment later, and the following colloquy took 
place on the electric wires : 

‘‘Ho, there, is this Mr. Lodge.” 

“Yes, sir; who is this talking?” 

“This is William D. Benson.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I97 

“Ah, how do you do, Mr. Benson? What can I do 
for you?’’ 

“Nothing at all, thank you. But I have a little 
news for you.” 

“Indeed? What is it? Something pleasant ?” 

“I hope so. At least I know it would be pleasant 
to me, and to lots of other people. Some money has 
just been deposited here to your credit, and I wish to 
know what your pleasure may be in regard to it — 
whether you will accept it and to what account of 
yours it is to be entered up?” 

“Before I answer all that, I want to know how 
much it is, and by whom it has been paid into your 
hands ?” 

“Oh, I forgot to say that the amount is small, only 
$100, and that it was paid in person a few minutes 
ago by ” 

“Mr. Verrazano Beverly?” John asked in a voice 
that was firm, but quietly satirical. 

“Why, yes, Mr. Beverly was the party.” 

“Then by all means accept the money,” John re- 
plied, “but instead of placing it to my credit, send it 
at Once in equal parts to the Orphan Girls’ Home, the 
Convent of the Good Shepherd and the Refuge of the 
Sisterhood of Mary Magdalen.” 


198 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

When John Lodge entered upon his career as a 
publisher of a daily newspaper his chief and almost 
only purpose was to provide all wage earners, and 
more especially those of the local community, with 
the means of making known and urging their 
needs and rights as the most important element* in the 
progressive, producing life of the nation. True to 
this mission, he had thrown open his columns to the 
presentation of all reports calculated to put before the 
public the just and rightful claims of labor to a 
greater share of business profits than had been ac- 
corded by employers in any age of the world’s history. 

In powerful editorial utterances written by polit- 
ical-economy professors who had resigned their chairs 
in universities to -serve on the staff of The Still Small 
Voice, John Lodge backed up and clenched the just 
claims voiced by labor’s representative men at the 
meetings of the toilers and unions. 

For the thinking portions of the public a great ob- 
ject lesson was conveyed in the alacrity with which the 
university teachers threw down the cap and gown for 
the pencil the very moment that salaries equal to those 
paid in the universities were offered by the young 
. publisher who was now beginning to be known to 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. I99 

fame as the “billionaire philanthropist of The Still 
Small Voice.” 

With great care and much honest, conscientious 
thought John Lodge had framed what he called a 
“rule of life” for his paper. It was short and may be 
given here. It read as follows: 

“Study to find the truth both in acts and thought — 
then print it uncolored and in the language of moder- 
ation. Denounce all forms of wrong-doing, and ply 
a verbal whip of scorpions on the wrong-doers for 
such misdeeds as the oppression of working people, 
and the filching from them of their rights — these mis- 
deeds always to be regarded as the greatest offenses 
possible in the world. Print all the news, but adjure 
one thing — the sensational thing known as yellow 
journalism. Suppress no news about millionaires, 
their spendthrift ways or dissolute habits. 

“Oppose all industrial systems whose tendency is 
to create industrial slaves. Oppose all forms of revo- 
lution, except it be a peaceable and just revolution. 

“But this above all — be not frightened in the least 
by threats that no advertising of interested rich mer- 
chants will be given to this paper if legitimate news, 
that may chance to put the said interested party or 
his friends in a bad light before the public, is not sup- 
pressed and refused a place in the paper’s columns. 

“Let the said minatory advertisers know that we 
are not seeking a fight with them, or with any of their 
‘business men’s’ clubs or associations ; give them firmly 
to understand that they will get equal and exact justice 
in our columns — the same measure of justice as the 


200 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


wage-earners obtain. Then, should they remain un- 
satisfied and still persist in demanding the favor of 
news’ suppression in return for the supposed favors 
of advertising contracts, past or present or future — 
why, in that case, tell them they are free to do as they 
please about their advertising and that this paper can 
and will take care of itself as best it may.” 

In this rule of action and scope for his paper, John, 
from the very start, saw the promise of a storm — a 
war to the finish with the powerful advertising inter- 
ests. But he could not and would not swerve one 
iota from the rule, no matter what financial loss he 
may sustain in the advertising denied or canceled. 

His expectation of trouble with the advertisers was 
correct. He soon found that they were withholding 
from the columns of his paper practically all the local 
advertising that the combined mercantile associations 
of the city could influence directly or indirectly. 

In this situation he called about him a council of 
all the one hundred and twenty men and women con- 
nected either as editors or writers with The Still 
Small Voice. He knew them all personally ; had 
worked with most of them as a reporter in the local 
field. It was his unvarying practice to treat them all 
as friends — as members of a brotherhood of service 
and benevolence in the great community in which he 
and they lived. He decided that he would take 
them into his confidence in this crisis and lay before 
them his reasons for a certain important step he con- 
templated taking in the near future. He met them at 




THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 201 

noon in the Printers’ chapel of the Voice, and to them 
he spoke as follows : 

My Dear Friends: 

I have called you together to inform you that The Still 
Small Voice is blacklisted by the advertisers’ ring of mer- 
chants. It was because of your experience, as well as of your 
integrity and honor, that I selected all of you, now here 
before me, to be my associates on this newspaper. 

It is hardly necessary for me to remind you of the fact — 
so well known. to you all-:-that for years it has been next to 
impossible for the editor-in-chief of any Chicago news- 
paper— or, for that matter, any newspaper in all this broad 
land — to consider himself free to print any piece of the most 
legitimate news, if it in any way proved offensive, or might 
be likely to prove offensive, to a member of the advertisers’ 
ring, or to any of the ring’s' close friends. 

Technically, of course, it was and is possible to print and 
publish almost anything. But let a newspaper story, as we 
call it, be printed, and let us suppose that it proves un- 
palatable for some reason to an advertiser, you all know 
how quickly the publisher and the business office — that is to 
say, the “downstairs” office or department through which 
the advertiser does “business” with the paper in question — 
will hear from the said advertiser. You and I, when we 
worked side by side on our Chicago newspapers, often had 
proof positive that legitimate news was being suppressed 
day by day in those papers’ offices, lest its publicaiton would 
offend the advertising nabobs and result in the loss of the 
papers’ revenue from advertising patronage. Did we not 
learn then that upon demand of any of the well-known large 
mercantile establishments of this and other cities any piece 
of news, no matter how legitimate as news, and no matter 
what may be the public’s right to know it, could be and 
frequently was suppressed — “killed,” as the phrase is — in all 
Chicago newspaper offices? 


202 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


From demanding to see the advertising proof-sheets, to 
which they may properly be given access, the large adver- 
tisers, and even the factotums of their establishments, have 
now advanced or evoluted to the very pinnacle of power. 
That is to say, they assert a censorship of all news affecting 
them or any member of their cliques ; and should any pub- 
lisher be rash enough to deny their demands and print news 
disagreeable to any of them, he is quickly punished by a 
stoppage of advertising from one or more mercantile firms. 

It is thus clear to all — or should be — that advertising of 
the sort I refer to is a subsidizing of the press, and that 
it is nearly always made the price for betrayal of the people. 

Under that system we have seen the glorious liberty of 
the press become practically a thing of the past. Instead of 
being the chief bulwark of the people’s rights and freedom, 
the press under such conditions has become the humble 
servant of the advertiser. “Vox populi, vox Dei” is no 
longer true. Now it is the voice of the advertiser that is 
th voice of God — at least it is the most potent voice heard’ 
in modern editorial sanctums. 

In this condition of the enslaved and subsidized press 
what has become of the people’s natural right to have a 
medium in which to voice the everlasting righteous wish in 
honest humanity’s heart — the wish that justice be done, in 
season and out of season, between man and man in this 
world? One of the highest aspirations of this wish for in- 
dustrial and economic jusice is that it be made impossible 
for any man to amass a fortune of say $100,000,000 from 
hired labor, and that if such vast profits are possible they 
should be shared to a reasonable and just extent by the 
hired forces of the employer — the forces by whose toil 
the amassing of such a fortune was accomplished. 

For these and similar reasons, my friends, I have con- 
cluded that the liberty of The Voice requires that it be per- 
petually divorced from paid advertising of all sorts. This 
divorcement will be effected at once — that is to say, as soon 


TIIK SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


203 


as the advertising contracts now in force are canceled or 
expire by limitation. That will occur not later than the 
last day of this month. From and after that date The Still 
Small Voice will be a newspaper exclusively, and will fill 
no part of the role of bulletin or poster for the advertisers. 

Too long has the money of the advertiser suppressed fhe 
voice of the press. The fear of losing the advertisers’ con- 
tracts is a sword of Damocles in newspaper offices — a sword 
suspended above the heads of editors, terrorizing them, one 
and all, into tame subserviency. And this sword of the 
advertiser is forged from Pluto’s gold — the gold that is 
smeared with the blood and tears of the countless victims of 
pauper wages. 

Murmurs of suppressed excitement, indicative of 
expected sensational developments, had vibrated 
among the audience almost from the moment John 
began to speak, and now the enthusiasm surpassed all 
bounds and culminated in tremendous applause. Wo- 
men waved their handkerchiefs and men and youths 
jumped from their seats and cheered warmly and long. 


204 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

After the applause had subsided John thanked the 
audience in a few modest, self-deprecatingf words. 
Then he resumed his general theme. He said: 

I want to say a few words more and I will have done. 
It is an inevitable sequel of what I have disclosed of my 
plans, that I should establish a chain of non-advertising 
newspapers in all large cities of the country — or at least that, 
a number of publishers be induced to realize the importance 
of throwing out of their newspapers all advertising that 
bears the actual taint or the suspicion of being a subsidy. 
As a means to this end I have already established an inde- 
pendent newspaper association, or news-collecting bureau, 
in seventeen of the largest cities of this country and Canada, 
as well as in Europe, Africa and Asia; in Brazil, too, and in 
South America. We all know that under the present sys- 
tem all the agencies for sending out news from one big 
city to another are controlled by the newspapers in the place 
from which the news is to be sent out — which is about the 
same as saying that the advertiser’s hand controls, or may 
control, everything that can safely be suppressed in the 
economic and industrial and social news of the day. 

Now, one final word. It is my hope and belief that it will 
not be necessary to increase the price of this newspaper 
from one cent a copy to two cents or five cents a copy; but, 
should such a step be necessary, no profit will be accepted 
on the venture. Expenses only are to be made, not money, 
by this newspaper. But if it cannot be made self-sustain- 
ing, without paid advertising, it can and probably will be 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 205 

, N 

printed at a loss as long as my money lasts. Indeed nothing 
would please me more than to be able to deliver daily into 
the people’s hands, entirely without price and without hope 
of reward, as good and complete a newspaper as any in the 
whole wide world — ^and to do that very thing will yet be my 
objective point — my dream of the future — the thing I shall 
yet accomplish, no matter whether the so-called millennium 
or Utopia of the co-operative commonwealth may or. may 
not have arrived meanwhile. 

Another outburst of enthusiastic applause thun- 
dered forth from the delighted audience. 

Before the demonstration had quite subsided a tall, 
cadaverous, but decidedly intellectual looking man — 
an editorial writer on the staff of the Voice — arose in 
his place in the middle of the hall. With this man 
the co-operative commonwealth was a sort of pet 
hobby and he was suspected of strong leaning toward 
the doctrines of socialism. His name is Rudolph 
Cobb. He is a great scholar — a man of note, 
whose writings on economic subjects had made him 
famous years ago in all the greatest of Europe’s uni- 
versities. All waited breathlessly for him to speak. 

“Nobody can have greater admiration or respect for 
Mr. Lodge than I have,” he began, “but, with his and 
the audience’s permission, I should like to have a few 
points in his great theme eluciated still further, as a 
right understanding of his meaning may be important 
at this time.” 

From his place oh the little dais of the chapel John 
Lodge bowed smilingly in acquiescence, and said ; 

“Go ahead, Mr. Cobb, with anything at all that you 
may want to say.” 


206 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


“Thank you for this consideration, Mr. Lodge,” 
continued the editorial writer. “One of the things I 
ask light upon is whether, when you said the people 
have a natural right to a newspaper medium in which 
to voice their needs and rights, you would accept as 
correct the inference that you believe the people have 
a natural right, or any other sort of right, to the use 
of your money for supplying them with such a me- 
dium ?” 

“No, I wouldn’t say that they have a natural right 
to the use of Mr. Lodge’s money, or any right at all, 
save in so far as he wants them to have a right,” said a 
nervous little man who jumped up and had his say in 
order to save John Lodge from the embarrassment of 
having to answer a supposedly awkward question. 

“Well, then, that raises the question of Mr. Lodge’s 
right to the money that is called his,” Mr. Cobb re- 
torted. 

“Not at all, not at all,” came in an impatient chorus 
from a hundred throats. 

“Let me say that in my opinion Mr. Cobb is entirely 
correct,” said John Lodge. “In fact I realize that I 
have no special right to the money left to me in my 
late uncle’s will. But its acceptance was simply forced 
upon me. My uncle got a great deal of the money out 
of some valuable mines that seem to have become his 
by right of discovery in Brazil, and as the Brazilian 
government and people felt under great obligations to 
him for important services rendered at a critical time, 
they would not harken to any proposal for a forfeiture 
of his estate from my uncle’s next of kin. And when I 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 2O7 

accepted the money it was as a sort of international 
trust, with a determination to do the most good with 
it ; and to that end Brazil shall be one of the countries 
in which I will strive to establish a free press, if I find 
they have it not, and I understand they haven’t.” 

Again John Lodge was applauded to the echo. 

^‘But is it not of the very essence of socialism to say 
that the people should control or operate the press as 
one of the public utilities ?” persisted Mr. Cobb. 

“No, I can’t look at it that way, professor,” said 
John. “It is rather of the essence of governmental 
democracy. It was not socialism when the people said 
that the agencies of government in this country should 
be operated not by kings or hereditary rulers, but by 
the elected servants of all the people. Government it- 
self is a public utility, and a self-governing people are 
not necessarily socialists. Neither is co-operation to be 
called socialism. For governmental purposes, co-ope- 
ration may become patriotism. Such is the theory, 
such the practice, for purposes of national defense in 
time of war. The fallacy in the theory of socialism is 
that it attempts too much, tries to regulate too many 
human actions, and would abolish and take away too 
many of the cherished liberties of the people. To at- 
tempt to do too much is analogous to attempting to 
prove too much, and we all know the rules of logic 
decree that what proves too much proves nothing.” 

Wildly enthusiastic applause greeted this utter- 
ance of John Lodge, and amid the din the editorial 
writer resumed his seat. 

Another member of the audience arose. It was 


2o8 the sword of the advertiser. 

» 

a woman — a woman gowned in the latest mode of 
fashion. She is the society editor. 

^‘What is to become — Mr. Lodge, what is to be- 
come of the society department? If the paper be- 
comes known as opposed to the rich we will find 
it hard to get any society news worth having.” 

‘‘I am not sure that any of it is worth having,” 
quickly retorted John, with a quiet but firm smile. 
'‘Perhaps the paper can get along without society 
news.” 

“Oh, my — ” 

“Now have patience. Miss Gibson ; don't be 
alarmed,” said John. “For it does not follow that 
because we may dispense with society news, we 
therefore would want to dispense with your serv- 
ices as one of our writers. Rest assured as to 
that — we shall be glad to find other work for you. 
Instead of the society department we will operate 
a sociological department for the study and im- 
provement of human types. We can use you as a staff 
writer for that department — shall be very pleased to 
do so.” 

“Oh, it is not so much that, Mr. Lodge, but — ” 

A storm of good-natured laughter, mingled with 
cheers and applause for The Voice and its pub- 
lisher, drowned out the voice of Miss Gibson and 
the meeting was declared at an end. 


THE SWORl) OF THE ADVERTISER. 


209 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


That night John Lodge had an appointment to 
visit at Kenwood a young lady who repeatedly had 
urged him to call upon her at her home — a stately 
mansion erected a short time before by her rich 
father. 

At the appointed hour John was at the house ; 
but he failed to gain admission, though the win- 
dows were ablaze with brilliant lights and he knew 
the young lady expected him. 

After ringing in vain for some time he departed. 
But from a nearby angle in the terraced lawn he 
noticed the young lady at a third-story window, 
whence she waved her handkerchief at him. With 
the true dignity of a gentlemaan he averted his 
gaze, as if he had not observed her — or simply had 
seen sonie forbidden sight. 

Still, he could not help wondering whether she 
was not virtually a prisoner there — kept, as it were, • 
under lock and key and away from him, while he 
was being snubbed by the studied neglect at the 
front door. He could not help smiling at such 
ridiculous procedure, especially as there was hardly 
anything of sentiment in the case — merely an ordi- 
nary invitation by a courteous and clever young lady. 

It may be that the report of his determination to 


210 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


take up the war-gage so long lying at his feet from 
the advertisers had already gained circulation, and 
the young lady’s father, who is one of the great 
mercantile advertisers, had heard the report and in 
a rage had made plans to thwart the visit to his 
daughter. 

Moreover, is not this merchant a prominent 
member of the so-called millionaires’ club on the 
lake front? He certainly is. And now John Lodge 
began to suspect that he was to be made the victim 
of a social boycott, as well as a business boycott, 
if the millionaire merchants could accomplish 
that — and who would say that they could not, since 
the influence they wield is enormous? It had al- 
ways been their way to work in secrecy — they were 
wise enough to exercise to the full their privilege 
of newspaper suppression of publicity. It would 
seem as if they feared to parade their wealth and 
exclusiveness too much before the people. Has 
not their traditional policy been to interdict the 
giving out of any news from the sacred precincts 
of their club-house? 

Repeatedly they had shut the doors in the faces 
of newspaper men, and because of their paid adver- 
tising felt safe in their incivility and boorishness. 
But they had hastened, to throw down the bars 
before John’s $100,000,000. He had declined their 
company, and now, perhaps, they were seeking 
vengeance in divers ways. 

Confident that the pretentions of the vulgar rich 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 2H 

were beginning to be despised by all worthy people, 
and that he always would be happy in the mere 
doing of justice and good deeds, John had about 
made up his mind that after this night’s experience 
he would ignore all the debutantes of the pres- 
ent season, when a tall man stepped from behind 
an evergreen shrub and confronted him. He said 
he was one of the night watchmen employed on the 
place. 

^‘Miss Delphine — that is to say. Miss Bronson — 
is indisposed tonight, sir,” he said, in a gruff voice, 
“but in any case you must not call on her again; 
her father says she must not be annoyed.” 

To knock this fellow down was John’s first im- 
pulse, and he clinched his fists. But he thought 
better of it. 

“Aha, she must not be annoyed, aye?” he said, 
with a mocking laugh. “Then why is she annoyed? 
Didn’t you see her there at that window a moment 
ago, smiling and signaling at me. Then, pray, 
who is annoying her, if not this man who calls 
himself her father? Ah, there she is again.” 

And, sure enough, there she was once more be- 
hind that grand facade, smiling sweetly at John 
and struggling with a partly concealed attendant in 
an effort to flaunt her delicate little lace-embroid- 
ered handkerchief once more. 

“Poor little caged bird I pity her,” said John, as 
he gallantly raised his hat and bowed toward her. 

Again she disappeared — was apparently dragged 


212 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


away from the window by the strong arms of some 
concealed person in the room with her. 

Then John Lodge turned to 'the astonished 
watchman and said in tones of great firmness : 

‘T never met the young lady more than once and 
did not seek either the presentation to her or the 
subsequent invitation to call. But you may tell 
your master, nevertheless, that I certainly shall not 
call again.^’ 

With that he was gone. He soon reached his 
hotel on the lake front. 

As he entered the rotunda of the fashionable 
hostelry he recognized in an elegantly gowned 
young woman, then alighting from an automobile 
at the door, the well-known face and form of Al- 
gona Norwell. She had ‘"advanced” somewhat 
since the day she ran in fright from a wine-room 
and fell fainting in State street. Yea, her “ad- 
vance” was manifest. For did she not now glide 
forward quite naturally on the mosaic corridor 
leading to the Babylonian room of this famous 
hotel — an apartment that has been nothing more 
nor less than a wine-room, save that it is gilded 
with fine furniture and for its patrons has the 
secretly depraved rich instead of the openly de- 
praved poor? 

John Lodge had not met the girl for months, but 
it did not surprise him in the least to see that she 
now had a male companion devotedly in attendance 


THE SWORU OF THE ADVERTISER. 


213 


at her side, and that the said companion was none 
other than Verrazano Beverly. 

Although John had not seen Algona for a long 
time he had heard many whisperings as to her rela- 
tions with Verrazano Beverly. He had learned that 
Mrs. Beverly was no more — that she had died of 
jealousy, neglect and a broken heart. 

He had heard, too, that the bereaved husband 
was not known to have gone into mourning; that 
in fact he quickly resumed his swift pace — had 
plunged deeper in than ever — and that the com- 
p>anion of his many escapades in gay resorts was a 
beautiful country girl whose career was even swifter 
than, that of the rich widower. 

Until this evening John Lodge was not aware 
that this girl was living in the same hotel with 
himself. Her fine clothes and lavish display of 
jewelry did not escape his notice. It was plain to 
him that she recognized him, and that she even 
tried to attract his attention. Nothing save his cold 
stare of assumed unrecognition was received by 
her in return. 

Then John turned briskly on his heel and to a 
porter gave a very audible order indicating that he 
was about to quit the hotel at once. In this, as 
in all things else, he kept his word. He did quit that 
hotel — quit it at once and forever. 


214 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

N. 

This same night of John’s repulse at the portals 
of the Bronson mansion Rudolph Cobb was one of 
a little party of newspaper men that gathered in 
the small hours of the morning in a private parlor 
of the newspaper club, there informally to celebrate 
“The partial unyoking of the daily press from the 
degrading rule of the advertiser, with his clink of 
coin and his braggart commercialism.” 

To this affair John Lodge was invited, but he 
had sent word at the last moment that he feared he 
could not attend. 

Necessarily the party was small and almost 
secret, as the rampant commercialism of the adver- 
tising journals — the so-called trade papers de- 
signed and printed to tell the paragon merits of 
some brand of soap, whisky or water — was never 
more conspicuously in the ascendant among the 
club’s rulers than at this time. Still, among the 
rank and file of the club there was a strong under- 
current of feeling in opposition to the policies by 
which publishers had allowed all metropolitan 
newspapers— and most others — to fall from their 
high estate in the last years of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury and become the humble servants of the large 
advertisers. It was felt, however, by these high- 


THE SWORD OF T?IE ADVERTISER. 


215 


minded young men that the evil of commercialism, 
wrought by advertising paid for at so much per 
page or column or line, was inevitable in the press 
of the day, a necessary evil so long as the people 
remain content to accept news and statescraft from 
newspapers whose real owners are a mercantile class 
which has its interest in the continuance of the 
present order of things, with little or no regard to 
the question of the justice or injustice of the afore- 
said present order. 

In responding to an informal toast of “Th^ news- 
paper unchained — The restored liberty of the press,” 
Rudolph Cobb spoke in an exultant vein of the 
day’s happenings in the office of The Still Small 
Voice. 

"‘What we have seen done today by John Lodge, 
publisher— may his tribe increase— portends great 
happenings for liberty, true reforms and progress 
in our day and generation,” he said. 

“A matter of common and all too regrettable 
knowledge among the initiates of the newspaper 
business has been that it is the large advertiser 
who not only pays the average newspaper pub- 
lisher’s bills, but who also makes fat and plethoric 
the said publisher’s bank account. In other words, 
it is a well-known fact that the sales of no one-cent 
or two-cent newspaper would ever yield revenue 
enough to pay expenses. So the workingman in 
paying his penny pittance for a newspaper of the 
day ought to know that in the truest, most liberal 


2i6 the sword of the advertiser. 

sense he is accepting charity from the large adver- 
tisers; that the nominal one-cent or two-cent price 
he pays for the paper is largely a blind retained to 
fool him, and that eventually he is made to pay 
back in full to the advertiser not only the price of 
the advertising in the newspaper, but also the money 
he fancied he saved when he bought the paper at a 
charitable rate, or for less than* cost. 

*‘Dual ownership of property is always a failure 
when tried upon an extensive scale. It generally 
allows one party in the duality to become para- 
mount — to grow richer than is right or politic ; and 
it helps to keep the other party poor. One partner 
or group in the partnership is bound to get the 
worst of it — and to endure oppression, extortion, 
robbery. All honor to John Lodge for ending this 
unnatural state of things in at least one great news- 
paper of this broad land. 

“What I like best of all in Mr. Lodge is his view 
that the big stores are afflicting a deserving and 
numerous class of clerks and salesmen and shop- 
girls with pauper wages. Unlike some socialists, I 
cannot believe that the big department stores, with 
their starvation wages, are a necessary economic 
step in the evolution toward the dawn of the social- 
istic day. It ought not to be necessary to wade 
through hell to get to heaven. 

“It is notorious that the big stores have driven a 
majority of the small stores out of business. Yet 
we now see the big stores originating, founding 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


217 

and maintaining what are really other small stores, 
the so-called trading stamp enterprises, which sim- 
ply represent the big stores’ mark-down price or 
discount— a discount with a string to it, however, 
as the said discount must be ^taken out’ in more 
trade and not in cash. The department store sys- 
tems must indeed be getting top-heavy when sucli 
cumbersome, time-consuming devices as trading 
stamps are necessary to cajole the shoppers away 
from the small stores yet doing business — the few 
that the public has not suffered to be driven to the 
wall. 

“Under the present industrial system of wages 
the majority of the people always will be poor, as 
the employers or payers of wages will never volun- 
tarily, under the competitive system, pay to the 
majority of a nation’s toilers a rate of wages suffi- 
ciently high for the said majority to grow rich 
upon. The press, therefore, is cruel as as well as 
traitorous to humanity, when it goes over body and 
soul to the camp of soulless plutocracy. Only the 
mistakes and failures of popular government are 
now commented upon in the press. A fugitive arti- 
cle or critique about pultocracy in the nation may 
occasionally be met with in the public prints ; but 
when has any of you ever seen in any of the so-called 
‘reputable’ Chicago ‘dailies’ a vigorous expose of the 
mistakes and oppressions of Chicago plutocrats 
having a veto upon the giving of big advertisements 
to the newspapers? 


2'I8 the sword of the advertiser. 

“From conviction this remarkable young man, Mr. 
Lodge, appears to be opposed to socialism. Still, he is 
just and fair to socialists — throws open his columns to 
us for the publication and defense of the great and just 
principles through the application of which we hope 
to bring about a peaceful revolution and abolish the 
hideous reign of the big boodler of the trustified 
interest who purchases an assortment of tariff laws 
under which he is able to extort billions from the 
masses of the people. 

“Notwithstanding Mr. Lodge's clever statement 
this afternoon of the reasons why he opposes social- 
ism, I want to say that I remain true to the old love. 
Like Gallileo I may deem it the part of deference 
not to persist, but I am still unconvinced. Like the 
terra firma of Gallileo's diagrams, this thing moves — 
socialism moves. It’s sunburst is on the horizon. 
It’s cornerstone is co-operation, executed by public 
agencies. It is today the only system of economics 
that stands between the reputed anarchy of labor 
unions and the oppression from industrial oligarchy 
— and from both these it will save the social order. 

“It is undeniable that the real lesson of Mr. 
Lodge’s argument today is that a newspaper, like a 
gas plant or waterworks or railroad, is a public util- 
ity. And because it is a public utility dual owner- 
ship is fatal to its mission. He is logical in sunder- 
ing the duality of ownership. But, my friends, the 
day will surely come when what will be generally 
known and acted upon in regard to this matter is 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 2ig 

that the truth here rests — as it usually does rest — 
in the golden rule of the middle course, and which 
truth in this case may be that at least some of the 
great newspapers should be owned and operated by 
the state or government. 

“I have said 'some,^ not all; said ^some’ advisedly. 
And why? Because competition even in the news- 
paper business may not be a bad thing for the state 
or the public — not bad even in the time when commer- 
cialism and the tyranny of the money power shall have 
ceased to hold sway over men’s minds and destinies. 

“Such, I opine, is the socialist case in reference to 
the important subject of newspapers, and it gives 
the nucleus of the socialist system. But it is not 
the whole socialist case. The new socialism should 
not urge the complete abolition of competition — 
which is a natural law of a certain kind and makes 
for rivalry, emulation and progress. But what the 
new socialism could and should do might be to use 
state competition and enforced publicity as the joint 
regulators of the trusts — or the oppressive business 
combinations, by whatever name known. Through 
that sort of competition the state might be able to 
regulate and keep within bounds, in a rather effect- 
ive way, the productive enterprises that seem to 
have been combined with a view to controling mark- 
ets and extorting highest prices, as well as for the 
boasted so-called economical benefits of reduced pay- 
roll expenditures. It ought to be a great object 
lesson to all thinking men to observe and consider 


220 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


how State canals in this country and every clime keep 
down the prices charged to the public by railroads— 
and by other private concerns engaged in the business 
of transportation as common carriers/’ 

“But how about the free-love plank in the socialist 
platform?” said Basil Cowley, whom John Lodge had 
placed on the executive staff of The Voice as manag- 
ing editor. “We have seen many of the great expo- 
nents of socialism order their domestic conduct upon 
the plan of the free-love plank. But that is a plan 
that Mr. Lodge never would and never could ac- 
cept — he says that he would first die a thousand 
deaths by mob violence.” 

“Mr. Lodge need have no fear that he will ever 
suffer that sort of martyrdom,” said Cobb, quite 
dryly. 

“Nothing can be further from the truth,” he con- 
tinued, “than to say that free-love is any part of the 
socialist system. It would be much more true to say 
that free-love is a part of the American system of 
democracy. What are your divorce mills here,' but 
free-love factories ? And no really representative 
writers on the philosophy of socialism can be found 
to favor free-love. Socialism is an economic system. 
It does not trend upon the domain of Venus. So- 
called socialists who attempt to engraft the blight of 
free-love on socialism are really socialism’s antag- 
onists, its worst enemies; just as the persons who pat- 
ronize divorce courts to get free-love permits are 
everywhere the worst enemies of that great and 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


221 


grand, but tottering fabric — Caucasian civilization.” 

A faint noise in a little balcony above the festive 
company now caused many to glance in that direc- 
tion. John Lodge was there, sitting half-concealed 
by the folds of a portier. He was recognized in- 
stantly and a great cheer went up. He arose and 
said : 

‘'Unintentionally and because I liked to see you 
enjoying yourselves I have been over-hearing a great 
many interesting things here for some minutes. But 
as I was invited, I assume it is all right for me to be 
here. Certainly no harm is done.” 

“None whatever!” was the cry that arose in an 
enthusiastic chorus of voices. 

“Speech, speech,” shouted one, then all. 

“Let me say that I believe I got into this balcony 
through some mistake,” continued John. “I was 
ushered here after I had told an attendant I wished 
to join the festive company from The Still Small 
Voice.” 

“Come down and join us,” cried one merry-maker. 

“Speech, speech,” cried another, and still others. 

Then John Lodge said : 

I am sorry to have to plead that I feel somewhat fatigued 
and need rest. So I can remain here only a few minutes 
more. Instead of a speech, permit me to make a few brief 
remarks in reply to the very remarkable argument that 
Mr. Cobb made for the “new socialism.” Like him, I also 
remain unconverted — a sort of Galileo, if you will, who can 
not see why socialism should be given a free hand to bring 
the world’s progress to a standstill When Mr. Cobb makes 


222 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


a plea for what he calls “state competition” he seems to 
abandon the socialist ideal of the co-operative common- 
wealth — which, I take it, means public ownership and opera- 
tion • of the means of production and distribution of life’s 
hecessities. To enforce or at least keep untrammeled the 
apparently natural law of supply and demand — with that 
law’s corollary, the competition that has been called the life 
of trade — has seemed to be the raison d’etre of one of the 
great political parties of this country for years — the party 
of Jefferson and Jackson and Tilden. If the party of these 
leaders has failed, it is because they did not foresee that the 
time would come when state-enforced publicity of all the 
details and specifications of the pauperizing payrolls of the 
profit-gobbling millionaires, or so-called captians of industry, 
would be the only thing that could stand between the oppressed 
wage-earners and industrial slavery, a slavery far worse than 
any slavery in all recorded history. 

Unfortunately, there has been too much false pride as to 
their wages among the earning masses of the community. 
It has been thought that a strong public sentiment favored 
the general custom of each individual wage-earner keeping 
secret from the public the exact amount of wage received. 
Nothing could have been worse for the wage-earners them- 
selves than this false sentiment of pride or shame, encour- 
aged as it has been by the employing classes — whose plans 
it always suited to keep as secret as possible the small wages 
that they have been paying. 

When the time comes in which the popular sentiment of 
the community and the nation will demand, in the interest of 
the public good and public justice, that every wage-earner 
make known and have published in The Still Small Voice, 
or other justice-promoting newspaper, the exact amount of 
his or her daily, weekly or monthly pay — then and not till 
then the day of industrial emancipation will have arrived. 
After that good time has come, an aroused public opinion 
and the law-making practical politicians of the great political 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


223 


parties may be relied on to do the rest, as the people will be 
forced in self-protection to realize that merchants and others 
known to be paying less than living wages to their em- 
ployes are public enemies, from whorn no good citizen, and 
no good citizen’s wife, or child, or sister, or sweetheart, 
can afford to be seen purchasing the necessaries of life, or 
any other article of trade or merchandise. 

It is my intention soon to begin in the columns of The 
Voice the publication of the payrolls of all the big retail 
and manufacturing firms in this city. Of course, we shall 
experience tremendous opposition in the work of securing 
the true wages — the children’s wages paid to men and 
women in big retail stores, sweatshops, factories, and such 
places. 

But we will secure the information nevertheless — yea, 
shall obtain it even though the work should cost a million 
dollars a month and require the services of. 100,000 re- 
porters. 


224 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERI'fSER. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

V 

Before the merry company realized that John 
Lodge had concluded his remarks, he was disappear- 
ing through the doorway by which he had entered 
the balcony. As his trim and neat, but unconsciously 
dashing figure, was vanishing from view of the 
merry-makers he was given a round of cheers that 
“made the welkin of the old rooftree ring,” as Joseph 
Finley expressed it at the time — only to repeat it the 
next day in the club-men’s column of The Still Small 
Voice. 

Toasts in John Lodge’s honor were now proposed 
and drunk with a will. Himself abstemious and 
sober to the last degree, John Lodge was yet a 
strong believer in the justice of the doctrine of per- 
sonal liberty, so long as the liberty did not descend 
to license — the libidinous excesses of intoxication. 
His liberal, common-sense views on this score were 
well known. But it was also well understood by all 
this merry company of his employes that John Lodge 
abhorred drunkards and that drunkenness was an 
abnomination to him — his bete noir. 

Hence, though nothing could exceed the hearti- 
ness and good-will with which the glasses clinked 
and the libations poured to the health of the young 
publisher, nevertheless, there was a becoming meas- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 225 

ure of wholesome restraint in all that was done dur- 
ing this session at table. It was felt by all that it 
would be unbecoming in any employe of the news- 
paper that represented the holiness of humanity to 
be guilty of the vice of excess in the use of the viands 
at this feast. 

But if there was restraint in this regard, there was 
absolutely no restraint at all upon the fun. In the 
joust of wit and the flow of soul and song no rule of 
limitation was imposed. 

Midnight is ever the halcyon time with active 
newspaper writers in the ranks of the press club. It 
is the hour when the mind of the young journalist 
finds relief and relaxation in the reaction of unbend- 
ing from the tense and strenuous pitch to which it 
was keyed up all day, while the exciting stories of 
murders, fires, highway robberies, or the scandals 
of politics or social life, were being sought after and 
written up. 

So the present company was in a jovial, not a 
serious, mood. Perhaps they all felt that the an- 
nouncement of policy just made by John Lodge in 
reference to the publication of pay-rolls was momen- 
tous and may prove epoch-making. Still, they wanted 
enjoyment at this moment, not discussions on eco- 
nomics. So when the toast was drunk to the health 
and success of their employer, the calls were for 
songs and funny, stories, not for speeches. 

Only a few of the funny tales were told when 
Rudolph Cobb, sociologist and editorial writer, arose 


226 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


solemnly near one end of the lon^ table about which 
the company was seated. 

“Gentlemen and friends,” he said before anybody 
suspected he was going to make another speech, “to 
go from the gay to the grave — ” 

“No, no, the grave is the pro])er place for a bore,” 
shouted one of the banqueters, concealing his face 
behind the elbow of his nearest neighbor. 

A great peal of laughter followed this sally. 

But the doctrinaire would not wear the cap and 
bells of lassitude and folly thus boldy flung at his 
feet. He ignored the interruption, with the laugh it 
evoked, and continued as follows : 

“We would show ourselves lacking, sadly lacking, 
in appreciation of the great mission of our news- 
paper, The Still Small Voice, and the noble altruism 
of its worthy publisher, were we to leave tonight this 
festive board without paying — ” 

“We always pay our board,” was the interrupting 
cry that came from a dozen hilarious throats of wags 
in a chorus. 

“Oh, I perceive that you will not allow me to pro- 
ceed,” the socialist thundered. “Doubtless, you be- 
lieve you are having great fun at my expense and 
that you are perpetrating a perfect fanfaronde of 
banter and bandiage, wi.ticisms and pleasantries, airy 
persiflage and brilliant repartee. But really you are 
wasting your ammunition. What I wanted to say was 
that it were proper for us to adopt a set of resolu- 
tions declaring it to be the sentiment of this meeting 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 22/ 

that the publication, as planned by Mr. Lodge, of 
the small wages paid in stores and offices and facto- 
ries, is bound to create a public sentiment which will 
compel the payment of living wages in all lines of 
industry and business, thus in time achieving the 
greatest and most momentous reform ever recorded 
in all the history of political economy.” 

“Down with pol-con! Adam Smith should have 
been a tinsmith,” was the exclamation in which were 
heard in unison the voices of a group of young writ- 
ers who had been students until recently on the 
campus of the Midway University. 

“Let me say, my young friends, that I am ready 
to subside before the pellets of your wit,” said the 
former professor, with a smile denoting that he 
viewed the flood of interruptions in the light of a 
huge joke. “But before I sit down I want you all to 
hear me tell briefly why I got up. It was to voice 
for this goodly company of John Lodge’s employes 
his proper need of praise, to say — ” 

“ ‘Because he needs no praise wilt thou be 
dumb?’ ” 

“I will,” replied Cobb. “You wags of the cult 
Shakesperean have bantered me out of countenance.” 

“You are lucky that you were not battered as well 
as bantered,” said Toastmaster Cowley, nodding 
' pleasantly to the sociologist. 

“I am defeated, routed, put to ignominious flight 
by the joint output of this festive company’s rapid- 
fire wit and waggery,” said the former professor pre- 


228 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


paring to resume his seat, “and now I am ready to 
enjoy until morning the songs and funny stories with 

which you want to be regaled.” 

« 

“Bravo, bravo! The professor is a jolly good fel- 
low,” shouted the assemblage, arising and clinking 
•glasses. Then the toastmaster gave the toast “The 
Professor.” And they all sang, as they stood, the 
fraternal postprandial ditty. 

For he’s a jolly good fellow, 

As nobody can deny. 

And a song that was sung many times before the 
merry meeting broke up that night was the follow- 
ing topical “Song of the Trusts,” specially written for 
the occasion by Joseph Finley: 

I know a dear spot, 

Where in twilight we sat, 

By the shore of the sea, 

When oiir love was begat. 


I have loved the dear spot — 
The earth-crust was so hot; 
But the trust 
Owns the crust, 

And the trust loves not. 


They may trustify love, 
They may trustify hate, 
They may trustify air, 
They may trustify fate; 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


229 


But who cares how high 
Or how deep they attain, 
While the bliss 
Of a kiss 

Is the same to a swain? 



r 


230 


THE SWORD OF THE ADV'ERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

In the Babylonian room of the ultra-fashionable 
hotel on the lake front was an inglenook which at 
the time of this narrative had acquired some fame as 
the particular corner wherein were wont nightly to 
congregate certain of the swiftest spendthrifts in the 
coteries of rich young men about town. It was a 
niche that was kept half-hidden all the time by great 
banks of flowers ; so that the occupants of its luxu- 
riously upholstered divan, as they sipped their wine 
or absinthe or cordial, could behold in all its gor- 
geous brilliance the nightly scene of after-theater 
lunch-time splendor, without being themselves ex- 
posed to much chance of observation. It was usually 
from the members of the “sets” who were in the 
habit of pre-empting this embowered corner that 
most of the requests for special music of the jolly 
and bizarre kind were taken by the waiters in their 
broadcloth and white linen to the members of the 
orchestra in another angle of this spacious drinking 
room. 

For weeks a party of three well-dressed young 
men, whose appearance and manners were sufficiently 
' blase to entitle them to some consideration in their 
obvious pretensions to leadership as money-spenders 


THE SWCRD OF THE ADVERTISER. 2^1 

and gay revellers, were the nightly occupants of this 
coveted retreat in the ^Babylonian room. 

They came early and stayed late. Two of them 
were heavy imbibers of strong drink. The other 
drank water only. 

It was well known to barkeepers and waiters in 
this drinking room named for old Babylon that not 
all the members of the trio of youths had come by 
their money through inheritance. Indeed it was 
notorious that one of the three had been an adven- 
turer pure and simple, if not worse, in the lurid 
quarter of the city some months ago and for years 
before. But now he spent money with freest hand, 
and it was he who never drank strong liquor in the 
Babylonian room, even in the congenial society of 
his favorite companions. 

True, he is now the boon companion of a brace 
of rich young men, one of whom is the son of a local 
mercantile plutocrat. 

In reference to the third personage of this set it 
may be said that he has been known as the possessor 
of great wealth since the day when he first flashed 
upon the town, some six months ago, with an income 
believed to be inexhaustible. But the source of his 
wealth was a mystery. In fact, only one member of 
the trio had any visible means for acquirement of the 
great riches that each undoubtedly possessed — and 
which all squandered with reckless extravagance in 
the highest kind of living. 

Although one of the three never drank anything 


232 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


stronger than Apollonaris water, it should be related 
that it was entirely to his influence that the triad vis- 
its were made so regularly o’ nights^to this room where 
the electric fountain sprayed and dazzled. 

Often his companions twitted him for his unac- 
customed abstinence from strong drink. 

They were chaffing him with more than their usual 
persistence on the night when John Lodge moved his 
residence so precipitately from this same hotel. But 
the victim of the badinage was not perturbed in the 
least. He simply smiled and said : 

“What of it? Don’t I pay for my rounds of the 
strong stuff that you fellows imbibe? Besides, my 
mind is busy pretty nearly all the time that I am 
here. To have a busy mind, a fellow must have a 
clear and free mind. Moreover, you boys can’t have 
quite forgotten that I am engaged here nightly in 
the study of a certain interesting problem of human 
nature — or rather should I say feminine nature ? Ha, 
there she comes — a bit flushed and somewhat angry- 
looking, it is true, but appearing more beautiful than 
ever before. 

“Ah, Julian, how she hates that old fellow with 
her. She does hate him — I tell you she does. And, 
as usual, she is already conscious of your presence 
here; is even now searching for you with her glorious 
eyes that are covertly peering forth beneath the 
beauteous auburn lashes. Why, my good fellow, she 
will be in love with you soon, and you won’t have 
sense enough to know it.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 233 

“Do you really think she is interested here/’ re- 
sponded Julian. “I would not be a bit bashful, you 
know% if I could believe she is interested in me. A 
fig for the inane old gallant escorting her!” 

“Inane. Don’t fool yourself, Julian. He has been 
smart enough to interest the most beautiful girl in 
Chicago. But she is now tired of him — very, very 
tired. Isn’t that the way it seems to you, Clarence?” 

“Why, yes, of course, she’s tired of him,” said 
Clarence, with a listless yawn. 

“Oh, Clarence says so, because you say so. What 
one asserts the other will swear to. So nice for you 
two lads to have a perfect understanding as to how 
to fool me! But I’ll get even some day.” 

“Now, friend Julian, don’t be so flighty,” said 
Clarence, who is a good-natured and very sympa- 
thetic young man, despite his graduate course in re- 
fined dissipation. “Why, I have no understanding 
with Randall on this thing, and my only reason for 
agreeing with what he says is because I have found 
that he always knows what he is talking about.” 

It was true that Randall had some good reasons on 
which to ground his pretensions to knowing what 
he was talking about in the present case, though he 
had taken care to keep his special knowledge a pro- 
found secret from his boon companions. His con- 
versation and vaticination had to do with the couple 
because .of whose presence here as guests John 
Lodge had ordered his household goods taken else- 
where. That is to say, the elderly man dubbed inane 


234 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


as well as tiresome by the trio of young rounders is 
Verrazano Beverly and his beautiful companion is 
Algona Norwell. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


235 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

To the keen eyes of Randall it was clear from the 
moment she entered the chamber of Babylon, to take 
a seat with her companion at her usual table, that 
this girl whom he had been studying for a month of 
evenings and whom he remembered as well as if his 
first meeting with her had occurred only the day be- 
fore — it was clear to him just now that something 
had gone wrong with her this night. 

It may have been a quarrel with the devoted per- 
son at her side. Such was Randall’s first conjecture. 
But he soon changed his mind on that score. 

Was she not smiling on the old gallant now? And 
what a bewitching smile it was? Not quite the same 
smile he had seen upon her beautiful face the day 
she arrived in Chicago, and when she was with him 
for so short a time in the drinking room of ^The 
Finish” grotto. No, not quite the same ineffably 
sweet and happy smile. But it was still one of the 
loveliest smiles in all the world. It now has the 
acquired quality of winsomeness. It is in fact the 
condescending, gracious smile of a woman lovable 
and beloved, who very charmingly tolerates mascu- 
line attention, but does not readily give in return her 
love. 

Her uneasiness this night was very marked, and 


236 


THE SWOIU) OF THE ADVERTISER. 


/ 


Randall thought that perhaps the psychological 
moment which he had been awaiting for so many 
weeks had at last arrived. It had. 

After sipping listlessly at the beverage provided 
to her order, she suddenly signified what appeared to 
be a request for her escort to go forth from the room 
and procure for her something or other that she 
told him she desired. 

As in devotion bound the merchant arose with 
alacrity and soon was prancing along the mosaic cor- 
ridors leading to the main lobby of the hotel. 

In a moment an obsequious waiter was at the girbs 
side, having responded to a silent, almost impercept- 
ible signal from her. Randal! was now keenly observ- 
ant of what was passing, and his heart experienced 
the pleasurable thrill of abounding hope as he saw 
the fair young woman of his dreams slip a dainty 
note, evidently accompanied by a weighty coin, into 
the ready palm of the man in waiting. 

It seemed that the said man in waiting well under- 
stood his business. Not a word had been spoken to 
him by the fair one. Yet by divers devious and cir- 
cuitous detours he soon reached the nook in which 
the vigilant young men were seated, their hearts pal- 
pitating with expectancy. 

It was in Randall’s hands that the note was laid, 
and forthwith he experienced a chilling of the sweet 
hopes in his veins. 

But just then Mr. Beverly re-entered. He bore 
triumphantly what seemed to be a box of bon-bons. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 237 

As he placed them in the fair one’s hands she arose 
to go. Her stately beauty, set off to the utmost by 
her gorgeous clothes and splendid array of jewels, 
caused an arching of the eyebrows everywhere 
among the fashionables thronging the seats at all the 
tables of the Babylonian room at this gala hour of 
the evening. 

Quickly the youth Randall explored the mysteries 
of the bit of scented paper in his grasp. What he 
read was this: 

I see you know me, and I think we understand each other. 
But I deem it well to have a thorough and formal under- 
standing with you. 

In the labyrinthine parlors of the only well-known hotel 
on State street I will meet you for an important interview 
tomorrow at 2:30 in the afternoon. 

Please arrange to have your two companions — in one of 
whom I am somewhat interested — join our party there at 
three o’clock. That will give us half an hour for our pri- 
vate talk, which, let me repeat, will be of great importance, 

A. N. 

P. S.— Of course, you will understand that you could 
never be the recipient of this note from me unless I had 
made up my mind to let bygones be bygones. So I will 
not harbor the past against you. Nay, it very probably will 
be in your power to make amends, perhaps to put me under 
lasting obligations, by doing me a certain service to be 
explained when I see you tomorrow. A, N. 

^^There you are, fellows,” said Randall in quietly 
exultant voice, tossing before them on the table the 
body of the letter, but retaining the postscript, which 
was on a separate sheet. 


238 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

“Good, we will all be there, old chap,” exclaimed 
Julian. 

“Didn’t I say that Randall always knew his busi- 
ness,” said Clarence. 

“You certainly did,” said Julian, winking at Ran- 
dall, as Clarence was considered bv these two 
worthies a sort of simpleton — a lamb who needed to 
be shorn very well in consideration of his initiation 
into the magic circle of the good fellows. 

“All right, then; let us drink to this fair damsel,” 
said Clarence. 

And drink they did; but it was not water that 
Edward Randall drank now. 

He quaffed the flowing bowl and drained it to the 
dregs, leading all the rest in toasts to the beauty of 
the girl who one time was so near being made a 
victim of his guile. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


239 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

It was some months since Randall fell in with 
Julian Augustus Bartlett and Clarence Potter Halli- 
well. With Bartlett he had engaged in a get-rich- 
quick enterprise which made them both millionaries 
in a few months, without the expenditure of anything 
save ingenuity and a small outlay for office rooms and 
furniture. 

Their joint enterprise was simple enough and it 
worked like a charm, once the preliminaries had been 
arranged. 

One of the most important of these preliminaries 
was to obtain for a consideration from a corrupt 
postoffice chief at Washington, D. C., one of the so- 
called get-rich-quick permits for unhampered use of 
the mails — one of the identical permits whose barter 
in high places at the American Capital caused one of 
the greatest political scandals of modern times. 

Procurement of this permit was effected by Julian 
Augustus Bartlett. He brought it to Chicago. It 
was about all he brought. Rumor had it that he 
found it convenient to change his name on coming 
to Chicago — which change was strange, if true, as 
he was known to claim Chicago as his birthplace, 
though he insisted that he had been taken hence in 


240 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


his childhood days for some reason that no one now 
living seemed to know. 

If ruled out of postoffices because of the taint or 
suspicion of fraud neither the Bartlett get-rich-quick 
plan, nor any of the mass of similar shady plans, 
could have been used to victimize the public. Nobody 
knew this better than Julian, and he therefore for- 
tified himself with the governmental ruling. 

“Let us make hay while the sun shines from Wash- 
ington,” he was wont to say to Randall, “for it may 
not always shine alike for the unjust and the just.” 

In the operation of the scheme Edward Randall 
was the person who stood before the public as the 
active head of the firm. Behind the scenes was 
Julian Augustus Bartlett, the “real brains” of the 
business. 

It really was a simple scheme. In the initial stages 
of the enterprise the firm advertised extensively. 

Briefly stated, the special business engaged in by 
the firm was the marketing of a “sure 'cure” for two 
of the most prevalent ills of humanity — obesity and 
leanness. 

“After either of our remedies is obtained and acted 
upon,” said one of the firm’s most alluring advertis- 
ing pamphlets, “everybody will realize instantly the 
great value received for the small sum invested. If 
the directions in either remedy are followed faith- 
fully, we absolutely guarantee a quick, infallible and 
easy cure. No bad results can ensue to patients, as 
no dangerous drugs and only the means suggested by 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 24I 

great nature herself are used in the preparation of 
our remedies. It will be necessary for us to have a 
large number of applicants for our cures before we 
can put them on the market at so cheap a price with- 
out running great danger of serious financial loss. 

^‘If you, to whom this letter comes, will send us $i 
forthwith we guarantee that you shall receive from us 
within five months from this date the absolutely 
infallible remedy or remedies which we have discov- 
ered, or speaking more exactly, rediscovered for the 
alleviation of two of humanity’s most annoying 
afflictions. 

“Should your family physician not endorse our 
remedy after you have shown it to him, we will re- 
fund your money, and in addition pay a forfeit of 
$100 to every such patient that may be found. 

“Take care to specify whether it is from too much 
or too little fat that you wish to be cured. Each rem- 
edy will cost you $1, no more no less. Promptly on 
arrival of the money a receipt will be sent to every 
patient. 

“Remember it will be ‘first come first served’ after 
May I, but we do not bind ourselves to send out 
either of the remedies to any patient or applicant 
before that date. Not later than the last day of the 
second week in May, however, the remedies posi- 
tively will have been placed in the hands of all appli- 
cants who shall be found to have sent to these offices, 
by May i, the full cash price. 

“It may be wise to apply in time, as our remedies 


242 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

are absolutely certain to be recognized as the best 
ever known.” 

True to its promise the firm began on the second 
day of May to send out remedies’ to all the 2,600,000 
subscribers on its books. And the said remedies 
proved to be “letters of advice” on health, engrossed 
in fine script upon scented note paper. 

They were in two forms and it will be necessary to 
give here only a sample of each. 

One prescription read : 


“TO THE OVER-FAT : 

CURTAIL YOUR CONSUMPTION 
OF FOOD PRODUCTS FROM THE 
BUTCHER’S SHOP.” 


The second prescription read : 


“TO THE UNDER-LEAN : 

INCREASE YOUR CONSUMPTION 
OF FOOD PRODUCTS FROM THE 
BUTCHER’S SHOP.” 

Such was the get-rich-quick scheme successfully 
operated by these young men. They boldly took the 
ground that their advice was tantamount to a new 
remedy — a great medical re-discovery was what they 
called it. They were not prosecuted; the laws could 
not reach them. For it seemed that none of the 
victims or patients would swear that the firm had not 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 243 

made delivery on its contracts. Besides, the family 
doctors endorsed the remedies as "‘the best eveV 
known.” Still, the two enterprising members of this 
get-rich-qiiick concern were warned solemly by the 
legal arm of the state that they would not be allowed 
to continue in their peculiar business or to embark in 
anything similar — if the purpose to commit the act of 
embarkation become known. 

But the two confidence men* were content to have 
reaped a golden harvest as pioneers in a novel realm 
of the get-rich-quick world. They agreed to take a 
rest and let well enough alone. Imprisonment and 
public odium they very willingly left for others to 
endure — left for those who were to swarm after them 
as imitators in the old-new endeavor to live by their 
wits and escape the necessity to do any real hard 
work in this world. 


244 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

With his daring policy of issuing a newspaper with- 
out paid advertisements in its #:olumns, John Lodge 
scored a great popular hit. His success was instan- 
taneous and complete. It seemed that the time must 
have been thoroughly ripe for such a move.’ It was a 
reform which the public was quick to see the justice of. 
Instantly the great, honest-hearted masses of the 
people realized the necessity for popular discourage- 
ment of the alliance between the publishers of the great 
newspapers and the interests that subsidized the said 
publications by the patronage of advertising matter 
that often brought each journal $100,000 a week. 

Willingly the people paid a few pennies more for 
The Still Small Voice than they would have to pay for 
any of the other newspapers of the day. But they had 
the satisfaction of knowing that in The Voice they 
were getting the truth and that nothing in its columns 
was colored to suit the interest, the whims or the 
commands of the very wealthy men or firms who alone 
could stand the heavy cost of the advertising which 
had been so much the vogue in the last quarter of the 
19th Century. 

After John had demonstrated to the public that he 
could publish as good a newspaper as any of the ad- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


245 


vertising-clogged sheets for only a few pennies more 
per copy, he made a master-stroke by reducing the 
price of The Voice to that of the cheapest newspaper 
ever published. He made it a penny paper. 

In a great editorial he explained to the people how 
utterly impossible it would be to make any newspaper 
a financial success at a penny a copy, no matter how 
many millions of copies might be sold daily. Even 
the mere blank paper in each copy would cost more 
than one penny, to say nothing of the great expense 
necessary for the business of collecting, printing and 
distributing as reading matter the current news of 
the day. 

“But the owner of this newspaper,” the editorial 
continued, “has at his command about $100,000,000, 
which came to him unsolicited; and he wants to do 
with that money as much good for all humanity as may 
be possible. 

“He regards a newspaper press untrammeled by the 
influence of interested advertisers as the greatest popu- 
lar need of the age. Aye, it is even a more important 
need than the founding of great universities, or great 
public libraries. 

“It is far more important than anything in the 
whole round of public needs, real or 'fancied, on which 
rich philanthropists have ben expending their money 
in these latter years. 

“What will be the need or use of universities or 
libraries if the great masses of the people are so 
poverty-stricken, so ill-paid, so underfed, so oppressed 


246 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

by an incubus of commercial trusts that it will take 
all their time and energy to keep the gaunt gray wolves 
of hunger and privation from their doors? Under 
such conditions will they have any chance to attend 
colleges for the higher education? Or would they 
care to read literature that shows them how truly mis- 
erable they are? Would the profound scholarship to 
be attained in fine-walled universities, and refurbished 
in free libraries, be good for millions of industrial 
serfs? That is one of the baffling problems of our 
time — a problem that the generation of this day may 
have to confront and settle as best it may. 

“For the present the owner of this newspaper hereby 
promises to keep on publishing it at a loss. He can 
stand it. He can stand it for years if necessary, 
even stand it for the whole term of his natural life. 
And after he is gone, it may be that a way will be 
found to continue the paper at any and all costs. 

“Its mission will be to create, encourage and keep 
thoroughly alive a strong and just and powerful pub- 
lic sentiment in favor of securing — aye, forcing— 
from all employers a fair and just share for all toilers 
in the products and the financial results of their toil. 

“Should that mission be accomplished — speed the 
day, the happy day — then it may happen that other 
crying evils could well engage this newspaper’s atten- 
tion. Or it may be that for humanity^s good it would 
well repay the outlay if the newspaper were so en- 
dowed — university-like — that for all time it could re- 
main guardian of industrial justice; avenger ot 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 247 

industrial wrongs. For it seems clear that in the 
coming time the ever-present problem will be how to 
hold in check the commercial, money-making instincts 
of selfish, greedy, mammon-loving interests that prob- 
ably ever will be prone to oppress those who shall have 
nothing but their labor to sell for bread. 

‘^All the signs and omens indicate unmistakably that 
rampant commercialism will force labor to the wall. 
Hence, the eternal vigilance of honest men and 
women will in the future be the price of industrial 
freedom and commercial justice.’' 


248 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

When this editorial appeared upon the streets John 
Lodge was in Dr. Barrett’s office making one of the 
visits there that now were among the greatest pleasures 
of his life, and almost daily occurrences. 

^‘You hint here about an endowment looking to the 
continuance of your paper for all time,” said the 
physician, whose smile and manner spoke his happi- 
ness. 

''Why, yes,” said John, quietly, "I have done it.” 

"Done what? You don’t mean ” 

"I mean that I have put aside $25,000,000 for that 
purpose — created a sinking fund with yourself as chief 
trustee, should anything occur that would put me out- 
side the breastworks temporarily or forever. I would 
have made the fund larger than $25,000,000 only I 
must not fail to take into account the funds that may 
be needed for my purposes in Brazil, where I shall 
make a long visit as soon as my plans here are well 
under way.” 

"But you need not so soon have taken such a step ; 
you may want to change your mind, friend John.” 

"Never, never,” John replied slowly and with em- 
phasis. *T am settled as to that and will never change. 
Besides, I have enough left — more than enough.” 

"But something unforeseen may happen.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 249 

“No matter what happens.” 

“You forget that it may not be necessary to have 
any such fund or endowment,” urged the doctor, his 
color heightening, his pulse quickening and his evi- 
dent pride in John struggling with his excitement and 
wonder over the startling news he had just heard. 

And the physician launched with enthusiasm into 
an argument that John had heard from him before. 
In substance it was that the growing public senti- 
ment against newspapers with paid advertisements 
was sure to force such papers to decline much or all of 
the paid advertising matter ; that the lack of revenues 
would then compel the publishers to raise the price of 
their several journals until the actual receipts from 
sales would recoup for the losses from the rejection of 
advertising; that newspapers would thus be placed 
on their natural footing of paying investments 
apart from all considerations of advertising, and then 
that the owner of The Still Small Voice could very 
properly raise the price of that newspaper to the same 
paying or self-sustaining price on which its com- 
petitors would have been placed. 

“It is a good argument,” said John, when the doctor 
had finished, “but the endowment will then be nec- 
essary as a contingent fund for use at any future 
time when the great mercantile interests may again 
attempt to throttle the press with their subsidies or 
quasi-subsidies in the guise of paid advertisements.” 

“Doubtless that is a matter worthy of consideration,” 
said the doctor, “but I would like to see so worthy a 
newspaper as The Voice go ahead by leaps and bounds. 


250 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

on its own merits, in a free and open field of jour- 
nalistic endeavor, and without any special favors like 
this endowment fund or any other.” 

“Well, of course that’s the ideal condition for a 
journal in an ideal newspaper field,” said John. “But 
unhappily the field for newspaper endeavor is not ideal. 
There is a great, high place in the good, true hearts 
of humanity for a daily newspaper, uncorrupted and 
incorruptible, that will remain for aye the bulwark — 
the watch-dog, so to speak — of industrial freedom for 
the toiling masses of the nations.” 

“It is a noble purpose, truly,” said Dr. Barrett. “I 
wish I could help you efifectively by adding a few 
million dollars to your endowment fund.” 

“Your kind sentiments and wishes do me honor* 
but really, my dear, good friend, I am only doing my 
duty as I see it. If you were in my place and had 
all this money I feel and could believe — even with- 
out the assurance implied in what you have said — 
that you would do exactly as I am doing. Did I not 
tell you in advance my aims and hopes ? As we rode 
together on that train through Michigan and Indiana 
did I not declare what I would do with great wealth, 
if I had it?” 

“You certainly did tell me all about it, friend John, 
and little did I think then that your great dream would 
so soon come true.” 

“Perhaps I had the advantage of you,” said John, 
“as even then I had information about the legacy from 
my dear uncle, but I thought best to keep quiet about 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 2^1 

it. Of course, I had no expectation it would be so 
vast a fortune as $100,000,000.’^ 

‘‘Nobody could have deserved it more — nobody in 
the world is better fitted to put it to good use,” said 
the physician. 

“Now, while you are in acquiescent mood, good 
friend, I will explain to you the over-mastering reason 
for the step I have taken in the matter of this endow- 
ment for The Voice. Did you ever stop to think 
what a tremendous obstacle to progress the average 
newspaper is today? If I have any one unquenchable 
desire in my soul, it is the craving for the advancement 
and triumph of those twin headlights of civilization — 
freedom and progress. 

“It is rarely that I talk about myself, doctor, and 
I hope you will pardon me; but with me it seems 
that an ever-present force in my heart and mind is 
the sentiment expressed by Tennyson in Locksley Hall 
when he says: 

Forward, forward let us range, 

Let the great world spin forever 
Down the ringing groves of change. 

“Well and prettily quoted,” the doctor exclaimed, 
in ecstacy. “Why, man, you might have been a 
great orator or actor, if you had not chosen to be an 
editor.” 

“How would it do to be a preacher?” said John, 
with a pleasant smile. “But more about that anon. 
For the present, I want to return to my thesis, which 
was and is to give you proof, if you have the time 


252 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

*to listen, that the old-established newspapers today 
are, almost without exception, the greatest of all 
stumbling blocks in the pathway of progress.” 

“Go ahead with your exposition ; I am all attention,” 
declared the physician. 

“Briefly, then, I would point out to you,” said John, 
“that the revenues from advertising create in a news- 
paper office an unnatural and artificial condition that 
in time warps and shrivels all real progress. You may 
not know just how the matter works out, for in the 
days when you were active in the newspaper world, 
the advertising business of a newspaper was secondary, 
and nobody gave the matter much thought. 

“But what do we see today? First and foremost 
we have the unnatural condition — the curious para- 
dox — that once a newspaper in a city or large town 
has attained a certain circulation, and is able to obtain 
a big price for its advertising space, it no longer has 
any real incentive for progress. After its advertising 
rates are fixed the real paradox is developed ; for then 
it transpires, with the inexorability of natural law, 
that every new increase in circulation will mean finan- 
cial loss instead of gain to the paper^s owner. In 
other words the owner knows that with a circulation 
of, say, 100,000 copies he can command the very same 
advertising revenue that he can get if the daily circula- 
tion of his sheet should have swelled to 150,000 or 
200,000 or more. He knows also that actual cash 
received in the sales of his publication would not pay 
for the wood-pulp consumed by the papermill in pro- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 253 

ducing the fabric on which he does his printing. 
Hence it is clear that the more newspapers such a 
publisher pays for printing, the more money he does 
not make. But he takes care not to print or strive for 
much of a surplus above his newspaper’s normal circu- 
lation. About all he has to do at this stage is to 
continue pleasing the advertisers, and to keep up a 
nearly perfect but somewhat easy simulation of enter- 
prise in collecting the news, coupling with these things 
a bald and hypocritical pretense of impartiality in 
presenting the colored news to the public. 

“Worst of all, everybody knows the blind fanaticism 
with which a newspaper reader will stick by a favorite 
sheet long after it has ceased to represent anybody 
or anything but the advertising plutocrats. Here 
comes in the most pitiable feature of the whole busi- 
ness : that the richer and more prosperous an advertis- 
ing newspaper becomes the more certain it is that it 
has become the enemy, not the friend, of its every day 
reader in lowly or moderate circumstances ; that in all 
the years in which he, as its constant reader, has 
allowed it to become endeared to him, learned almost 
to love it — that in all this time the favorite newspaper 
has been growing away from him and gradually lining 
up with the very rich; that both of these interests — 
the rich advertisers and the newspapers — are working 
hand-in-glove to get all they can out of him, and 
keep him as much as possible in the economic darkness 
that means perpetual poverty and despair; that he is 
befogged and cajoled alike by publisher and advertiser 


254 the sword of the advertiser. 

— but he, the average, good-hearted mortal, yielding 
to the instincts of the humanity roused in him by 
long years of association, still swears by the newspaper 
that he once deluded himself into believing stood up 
for human rights and for himself, and whose utter- 
ances in later years may have brought anguish to his 
soul but as yet have not been able to divorce his love/^ 

^‘Bravo, my friend, bravo; you are entirely right,” 
exclaimed Dr. Barrett, clapping his hands in glee. 
"‘On my honor, I never heard the case put that way — 
never thought of it before in that light — though, of 
course, I have felt for years, just as most others have 
felt, that there is something radically wrong with the 
newspapers. By jove, those Germans are right. What 
keen reasoners they are. In Germany they call the 
newspapers the vampire press, don^t they?” 

“Yes, the old iron chancellor, Bismarck, gave them 
an object lesson as to their press that they will not 
soon forget in the fatherland. Not content with sub- 
sidising the German newspapers, the creator of United 
Germany rubbed in the pickle by boasting about his 
purchase of the editors.” 

“Well, the American Mercantile Bismarcks have 
more tact,” said the doctor. 

“And the American proprietory editors have more 
of Pluto’s gold,” remarked John Lodge. 

“Very true; no doubt, most true.” 

“Ah, doctor, it is hard for anybody but an initiate 
of the so-called modern methods of newspapers to 
realize what a farce and hollow mockery is the pre- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 255 

tense of the big daily papers to give fair play or a 
voice to the cause of the plain person who works for 
wages. Why, during all the months of my experience 
as a reporter of labor news there was one thought — 
the very kernel of the whole just claim of labor — 
which I never was able to have printed, though I 
wrote it perhaps a thousand times in quotations and 
reports of speeches I had heard at the gatherings of 
workingmen.” 

“Indeed ; it must be something dreadful,” said the 
doctor, “anarchistic, I suppose ; or revolutionary ?” 

“Why, not at all, doctor. It was simply a cry for 
justice — an attempt to make it plain — to say in so 
many words — that the crying grievance of wage- 
earners all the world over is that a fair and just share 
of the financial results of their toil is not given by the 
employers to the people who do most, if not prac- 
tically all, the real hard work of the world — the toilers 
for daily, weekly or monthly wages.” 

“Why, friend John, I think I have seen in news- 
paper print somewhere that every just and proper 
statement of the wage-workers’ demand as now re- 
cited by you,” said the doctor, musingly. 

“Not very often, if at all in recent times in this 
town, I venture to say,” declared John Lodge. “I 
tried to put the thought in print myself so often th’at 
I simply gave up in despair. A subservient subeditor, 
wielding a handy blue pencil, never failed to erase the 
objectionable thought, after the manuscript left my 
hands to go to the printer. It would seem that among 


256 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the members of the combine controlling the local 
press an understanding existed whereby anything cal- 
culated to stir up the smoldering fires of discontent in 
the working people should rigorously be suppressed — 
eliminated from the news columns of all the papers. 
But at the same time the columns of these identical 
journals were filled with wild editorial shrieks about 
the impending revolution that union labor was declared 
to be plotting night and day. The shrieks, of course, 
were utterly unwarranted — the revolution was not 
arriving, has. not yet arrived. But the false alarm 
served to prejudice the the public against labor organ- 
izations and gave a semblance of excuse for refusing* 
to state fairly the claims of workmen asking only for 
a wage increase to meet the increased cost of living 
under high tariff walls and the rule of industrial trusts. 
Oh, doctor, I think we shall find, if we live long 
enough, that all wage-earners will continue to grow 
even more bitter than at present over the injustice of 
which they are the constant victims, and that the 
thought of revolution will soon seem terrible only to 
the small minority — the should-be revoluted.”^ 

‘'No doubt, no doubt,” said the doctor, as if rous- 
ing from a trance. “Well, my boy, I feel as if I had 
been listening to a fine sermon on the great subject 
of economic justice.” 

“Why, that is just it, I have been rehearsing to some 
extent in advance of anticipated pulpit ordeals,” said 
John, with a soft, silvery laugh. “I am soon to preach 
in the New *South church, this city.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER, 257 

“Truly?” 

“Most truly, doctor. I believe I forgot to tell you 
that I received the invitation some time ago ; accepted 
it, and that my sermon will be delivered some Sunday 
next month, if all goes well.” 

“I hope all will go well, and certainly I shall be 
present to hear you,” said the physician. 

They were about to part and John Lodge already 
was at the vestibule door when the doctor called to 
him to return for a moment. 

“I want to say that I almost forgot to ask what 
progress you are making with your plan to obtain, 
with a view to publication, the lists of the wages paid 
in all the big retail and wholesale stores of the shop- 
ping districts in which the hordes of poor wage-slaves 
make such vast fortunes for employers?” Dr. Barrett 
inquired. 

“Oh, the work of gathering the data is progressing 
famously,” John replied. “You see, the plan is to get 
a complete — or practically complete — roster of the 
figures on all the payrolls of stores and factories, big 
and little, and not to begin the publication of any 
until all are in our hands. Then we shall begin pub- 
lishing the figures day by day, so that the public may 
be able to judge for themselves which stores and 
industries are worthy of patronage and which un- 
worthy'; and we shall keep on publishing .and re-pub- 
lishing those figures for years, if necessary.” 

“By thunder, friend John, that is a splendid idea,” 
the doctor exclaimed. “But it would seem to behoove 
you to proceed cautiously, lest the employers should 


258 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

take alarm and dismiss most or many of the wage- 
earners, so as to cause a scare or panic with a view 
to hampering the work of your young men or women 
who, I assume, are gathering the figures.” 

“No fear of that — none whatever, doctor,” said 
John Lodge, with serene confidence. ‘‘The work of 
gathering the information is being done so secretly 
that the employers, should they wish to adopt such 
drastic and tyrannical measures as dismissal and ter- 
rorism, would not know where to begin — upon which 
employe to let fall the Damocles sword of fear of 
starvation. Besides, the employers are beginning 
to have a more wholesome fear of public opinion 
than ever before. Then, too, they are aware that The 
Still Small Voice has a good-sized treasury and could, 
if necessary, provide the dismissed wage-earners with 
the necessaries of life until an indignant and outraged 
public opinion would force all employers to give to 
labor a just share of the financial accumulations that 
labor produces. If all who are employed as wage- 
earners were given — what is their right and their own 
— a fair remuneration on a profit-shearing basis, the 
standard of industrial toil and decent living would be 
improved all around. Then the properly paid wage- 
earners, at work, could well afford to pay taxes 
sufficient to provide for the people unable to work, 
or not able to find work to do. For the wage-earners 
would then have justly in their possession a large 
share of the surplus millions now in the hands of the 
wealth-encumbered rich, and much of which wealth is 


/ 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 259 

yearly sent out of the country in the form of colossal 
wedding doweries for title-hunting heiresses. But, I 
must not detain you further with this sort of talk just 
now. I will see you later, doctor — at luncheon, 
perhaps.’’ 

He departed. As he stepped from the suite of ele- 
gant offices, he was passed in the hallway by Miss 
Sophonisba Beverly. She beamed so pleasantly on 
John that she almost embarrassed him. 

“Oh, doctor, dear,” she said in breathless accents, 
“that fine young man, Mr. Lodge, about whom I have 
heard so many great and grand things — I just met 
him at the outer door and — could you believe it? — I 
almost spoke to him, though I never met him before, 
and knew him only because I recognized him from 
the pictures of him that I have seen printed in the 
newspapers.” 

“Well, Miss Sophonisba, it would certainly have 
been all right if you had spoken to him,” said the 
doctor. 

“I supposed it would have been, he looked so nice 
and kind and good. But, doctor, is he really so great 
and grand and noble that he will spend all his millions 
for the good of the poor working people?” 

With calm deliberation the doctor replied: 

“Miss Sophonisba, he is so noble and true that I 
could take ofiF my hat fifty times a day to his shadow. 
If we only had one thousand rich optimists like him, 
they would make of this world a paradise.” 


26 o 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XL. 

With the doctor Miss Sophonisba had a long consul- 
tation. It was not that she sought or needed any 
medical advice as to her state of health. She 
had come to talk not of herself but of her brother 
— the brother of whose triumphs in great affairs of 
commerce and finance she was so justly proud, but 
whose mode of life for years had been a constant worry 
and torment to her. That brother’s confidence she 
enjoyed more completely than any other person -alive, 
and for years it was her mediation that alone stood 
between him and a separation from his wife, now 
dead and by him forgotten. It was well known to 
Miss Sophonisba that there was a complete hiatus of 
temperamental incom'patibility betwen her brother 
and his wife, and while she secretly sympathized with 
her brother she had deemed it her duty to befriend 
the wife on all occasions both -m public and in private. 

For the sake of their daughter, the sweet and inno- 
cent Leandra, whose right to happiness and the 
heritage of an untarnished. name, was always the theme 
of Sophonisba’s discourses with her brother, the 
utmost care had been taken in the Beverly household 
to maintain at least a semblance of domestic harmony 
for many years before Mrs. Beverly’s death. She 
had been dead and gone scarcely more than a few 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 261 

weeks until a nemesis arose up to torment the faith- 
less husband in his most secret personal affairs. As 
to this new torment, he had made his sister his 
confident. 

Woman-like she soon began to feel that she too must 
find a confidant. To seek was to find ; her quest was 
ended soon. 

It was perhaps quite natural for her to make the 
family physician her confidant. His fiduciary relations 
with the Beverly family have already been seen to be 
very close. He had knowledge at first hand of all 
the family skeletons in the Beverly closets. What he 
did not know in detail of the family’s secrets was 
inconsiderable and quite easy for him to surmise. 

‘T called today, dear doctor, to tell you about some 
new troubles that involve my poor brother, and to get 
your advice,” said Miss Sophonisba to the physician.' 
“Oh, doctor, if you only knew how I pity my poor 
brother and the dear, sweet Leandra !” 

Tears glistened in her eyes, and the doctor answered 
sympathetically. What he saw was this: 

“That young woman — I suppose it is she who is 
making the trouble?” 

“Yes, it is that woman.” 

“I feared something of the son,” said the doctor. 

“She wants him to marry her, doctor — to marry her, 
and at once! Think of it! To take the place of a 
mother to that innocent little angel of a girl, Leandra ! 
Just think of it! What shameless effrontery!” 

“Aha, I have thought for a long time that it would 


262 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


come to that,” replied the physician. “What answer 
has he given to her proposal?” 

“That’s just the point. He will not say what he is 
going to do. He tells of repeated quarrels with her of 
late. She seems to have been throwing out hints and 
intimations that he evidently construes as threats of 
approaching lawsuits, exposure and disgrace. More- 
over, he says that she has developed fierce hate and 
jealousy toward Leandra, poor little pet, and for no 
other reason than because her father praises and loves 
her so. What is worst of all, this hateful, vicious 
woman has conceived the notion that Leandra offered 
her a deadly affront. You see, this dreadful creature — 
Algona — what is it? — I forget her name.” 

“Miss Norwell, I believe is the name,” said the 
physician. 

“Yes, that’s it. Well she managed in some way to 
meet my brother and poor Leandra in some place 
where he was forced to present to her his sweet, inno- 
cent child. But the instinct of the good and pure and 
true in girlhood came to dear Leandra’s aid. She 
turned from the adventuress as from a serpent that 
would inflict a deadly embrace.” 

“Ah, that will not be forgiven,” said the doctor, 
pensively. 

“It is my firm belief that he will never place her 
over his daughter, doctor, but I am by no means 
so sure what would happen if Leandra were married 
and provided with a protector.” 

“That’s just it,” said the doctor, laconically. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 263 

'Well, then I hope Leandra never will marry, if 
that is the only way to keep that dreadful woman out 
of our family,’’ said Miss Sophonisba, flaring up 
proudly and self-consciously in behalf of the house of 
Beverly. 

"Your objection to the young woman is only natural 
and to be expected,” said Dr. Barrett. "But really it 
may be the best thing in the world if Miss Leandra 
were married. For you know, and I know, and I 
regret to say many others know that Mr. Beverly is 
completely and hopelessly infatuated with this young 
woman, and there is no telling what her influence 
over him may not get him to do.” 

"Oh, doctor, is there no way to get him away from 
Chicago for a while? Could you not induce him to go 
on a long ocean voyage? You could go with him as 
his medical advisor ; and Leandra and I would also go.” 

"It is utterly impossible to get him to do anything 
of that sort; you know, I have argued with him on 
that subject repeatedly,” the physician declared. 

"Oh, my poor, dear b rother ! What troubles he 
has!” said Miss Beverly. "To have that woman to 
deal with, besides the mental distress that I know he 
entertains lest the lost ones may turn up any momnt 
and claim nearly all we have in the world. If Ver- 
razano’s business, great as it is, were now to be divided 
to suit the whim or claim of the long-lost heir of our 
dead brother, the whilom partner of the firm, why in 
that case the partition proceedings would force dear 


264 the sword of the advertiser. 

Vero to the wall_, so complicated have his affairs be- 
come in recent years.” 

“For which, among other reasons,” said the doctor, 
“it might be very wise and prudent in her good aunt 
to aid in marrying off Miss Leandra as soon as pos- 
sible. There are lots of suitable young men — John 
Lodge for instance. It is not long ago since Mr. 
Lodge saved Miss Leandra’s life, and I believe she 
then thought well of him. Indeed, it was my intention, 
with your aid, to arrange some plan whereby they 
could be presented to each other, but the difficulties 
in the way were unsurmountable.” 

“I remember you said that very thing at the time, 
doctor, but though I did not then say anything, you 
will, I hope, pardon me if I say now that I never 
could see any difficulty at all in the way. I am sure 
he is, as you say, a splendid young man — the best in 
all the world.” 

“So is she the best young lady in all the world. 
Yet, you have my word of honor for it that the 
obstacles were there, and that they were mountain 
high.” 

“Then I believe it must be so,” said Miss 
Sophonisba. “Still, I am sorry we did not make an 
effort against those obstacles, whatever they may have 
been. We might have found a way to overcome them 
at the time; now, I fear it is too late.” 

“How is that? Has Miss Leandra found a swain?” 

“Well, she learned in some way that this woman, 
Algona Norwell, has been infatuated for years with 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 265 

Mr. Lodge, and although she does not believe that he 
ever could care for that sort of a woman, still poor 
Leandra’s own tender feeling for Mr. Lodge proved 
unable to survive the shock of such a discovery.” 

my honor, I am exceedingly sorry for that,” 
murmured the physician. 

“But has she any new attachment?” he added. 

“I rather suspect that she has. She seemi to have 
a great liking for a young man whom she met at the 
last horse show — Clarence Halliwell.” 

“Ah, that handsome young man ; the son and sole 
heir of the wealthy Cleburne Halliwell.” 

“Yes.” 

“I have heard he has been a bit wild, but perhaps 
he is' settling down,” declared the doctor. “In any 
case he is said to be a magnificent young man, high- 
spirited, honorable, noble and generous.” 

“Doctor, he is all that, and she rather likes him, I 
think.” 

“Now, will you take my advice in this matter?” 

“That’s what I came here to get, good doctor.” 

“Then, I will gladly give it. Here it is ! As 
chaperon of your niece it will be the easiest thing in 
the world for you to give her every possible oppor- 
tunity to become engaged to marry Mr. Clarence Halli- 
well; and, once they are engaged, let them marry as 
soon as possible.” 

“Doctor, why do you give that advice; she is very 
young — hardly seventeen.” 

“Because, I fear her father will marry very soon.” 

“That Norwell woman?” 


266 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


“Pardon me if I say yes.” 

“That’s dreadful. But what are your reasons for 
believing such a thing?” 

“Because he is growing very jealous of Miss Nor- 
well.” 

“Oh, my; how perfectly dreadful.” 

“He suspects she is learning to like a certain young 
man about town.” 

“Then you think the fear that she may marry this 
young man might cause my brother to marry her any 
moment ?” 

“Precisely.” 

“’Mercy, mercy. How I pity my poor brother! 
And Leandra, the dear little darling! Ha, it must be 
done. She must be saved from a life beneath the same 
roof with the shameless wanton. I’ll take your advice. 
Leandra must and shall be married off as soon as 
possible. I might have known your advice is right, 
and the best in the world. It always is.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


267 


CHAPTER XLI. 

When the quarrels between Verrazano Beverly and 
Miss Norwell, referred to by Miss Sophonisba Beverly 
in her latest conference with the family physician, had 
reached a crisis, Miss Norwell made a hurried trip 
into the country and returned in a few days with an 
aged bucolic couple supposed to be her parents. 

They really were her foster parents. At least they 
had stood in that relation to her for years — or since 
the day when, as a little maid of early age, she came 
out of the woods to visit them, never to return. 

It was true she had not come out of the woods 
alone. She was accompanied, led rather, by the one 
person of whom she had tender but rather dim recol- 
lections — whom she . had called “mamma” until told in 
the later time that she never knew a real mother’s love 
or care. Still, she had called by the tender name of 
mother — “mamma” — this being who now in the pho- 
tography of memory seemed a figure infinitely strange 
and fantastic and tawdry. 

It was as fresh in Algona’s mind as an event of 
yesterday that in her early childhood she rode in a sort 
of basket upon the back of this quaint figure — the said 
basket-like contrivance being comfortable, though 
crippling. 

On the borders of those woods beneath whose pleas- 


268 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


and shade she had pursued the bumblebees and 
butterflies round about through meadows of wild- 
flowers, she and her basket-bearing companion were 
met one day by two other persons, a gentleman and a 
fine lady. And the fine lady was very kind to her. 
To this fine lady and her escort it would seem that 
her “parent” or companion surrendered her. 

But before the breaking up of this meeting in the 
woods the quaint figure led her aside, and suspending 
a little trinket, with a gold chain, around her neck, 
spoke the following never forgotten words: 

“Queenie dear, you are now going away to attend 
school and become a fine lady. I give you this for a 
necklace ; cherish it always as a keepsake ; it will bring 
you luck ; so don’t ever take it off or part with it.” 

To this day Algona could not tell whether the figure 
by whose kindly sun-browned hands the trinket had 
been fastened around her neck was a man or a woman. 
From the recollection of the bright colored long cloak 
or shawl that flapped in folds upon the person’s ex- 
tended arms, Algona was inclined to believe the 
evidence indicated femininity. But the voice accom- 
panying the acts and gestures of the cloaked figure was 
coarse, masculine and almost raucous. So the mystery 
of the occurrence was not dissipated by time. 

With the two strangers she remembered how she 
that day departed from the shadows of the sweet briar 
in the wild woods. Soon she was aboard a train — the 
first she had ever seen — and was being borne rapidly 
away from the scene of her home in the glade of the 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 269 

woodlands. Her course — the course of the train and 
of her twQ pleasant companions and everybody else — 
she saw was toward the rising sun, farther and farther 
away from the shady forest with the broad prairies 
and the silvery rivulets skirting along its edges. 

On and on they sped for hours and days and nights. 
She was taken at last from the train, which to her 
was a sort of palace, rolling along on wheels. 

Her memory of a sojourn in a big city for some days 
at this time was clear. But she never was quite able 
to learn who the gentleman and the fine lady were. 
What baffled her still more was that these new-found 
friends parted company with her in the big city — 
gave her to Chauncey Pinckney and his wife Sarah, by 
whom she was taken to their pretty farm near Blue 

Pigeon, Mich. 

There she attended the village school and grew to 
girlhood. Her constant companion and playmate was 
Chauncey Pinckney, Jr., a hunchback and dwarf, who 
also was consumptive and partially crippled. He fell 
hopelessly in love with the beautiful maiden. 

His love was first laughed at by her ; and, as he 
persisted, she spurned him. His jealousy was then 
aroused; he told her he would kill any other youth 
from whom she should accept attention. She knew 
his parents secretly if not openly were encouraging 

him. 

To escape him and them she had departed secretly 
from the farm, and at the village station took the early 
morning train for Chicago. Some months later she 


270 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

read in a Chicago newspaper that Chauncey Pinckney, 
Jr., had been found drowned in Notaway river and 
that it was supposed he had committed suicide because 
of disappointment in a love affair. 

His parents would not admit that he ever had any 
love affairs and it was their belief, according to the 
newspaper account, that his death had been due to an 
accident, which, they claimed, might have happened 
quite easily on account of his poor health. 

About the time she read this version of the Pinckney 
tragedy it happened that Miss Norwell was beginning 
to foresee that she would soon stand in serious need 
of a protector or protectors. She was quick to recall 
that the Pinckneys, though kind and estimable in many 
ways, were never supposed to be over-burdened with 
scruples. She felt they were liable to be especially 
amenable to financial argument. Communication with 
them was opened up by her at once and their visit 
arranged. 

. Her contract or agreement with them was com- 
prehensive and thorough. She dressed them up in 
city clothes and installed them in a pretty residence 
specially rented for them in the fashionable suburb, 
Kenwood. 

Tiring of hotel life — or affecting to be tired of it — 
she took up her residence with her ‘‘parents” in Ken- 
wood. It is given out that she is an heiress. Her 
beauty and dash went far toward supporting the claim, 
and many young men began to pay court to her. She 
found all insipid except Julian Bartlett. Him she was 
bent UDon marrying. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


271 


She never received Mr. Beverly in her Kenwood 
home. 

“1 know that Mr. Beverly is one of the richest men 
in the world,” she said one evening to Julian Bartlett. 

'‘But I don’t need to marry for money,” she added. 

“Oh, he is too old for you,” said Julian. 

“It would never do to let him hear you say that,” 
she averred, with a rippling little laugh. 

“He certainly is far and away the youngest looking 
man I ever knew at 65,” said Julian. 

“I understood when I first met him that he was not 
quite 50, and he has shocked me by pleading guilty to 
65,” she declared. “Still his ways were so young and 
pleasing he would have deceived almost anybody. 
Besides I did not know he was being talked about for 
mistreatment of his late wife. Often I have thought 
whether he can really be sincere in the great love 
he professes for his daughter, who is the child of the 
woman he is said to have neglected and mistreated as 
his wife!” 

“Yes, he really does love his daughter,” said Julian. 
“Our friend Qarence has known her and the Beverly 
family for years, and he declares it is all true what 
they say about her father’s great affection for her. In 
fact, I believe Clarence once was engaged to Leandra — 
or as good as engaged. But she broke off with him; 
as it were — jilted him, for this young editor, Lodge, 
whose dashing feat in saving her life in the runaway 
affair quite caught her girlish fancy.” 

Julian failed to notice a little tremor that just now 


272 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

affected Algona. She turned pale and complained that 
she had a headache. 

‘‘But it is nothing,” she added, quickly. “Go ahead, . 
Julian dear, with whatever you were going to say.” 

“Why, all I can say in addition about Miss Leandra 
is that Clarence says she has gotten bravely over her 
silliness about Lodge, as he calls it, and that now she 
wants to make up with himself, ‘after she nearly drove 
him into the lake.’ ” 

“Ah, she wants to make up, does she?” said Miss 
Norwell. “That’s good. Will you do me a favor, 
Julian, and ask no questions for the present?” 

“Command me and it is done,” said Julian, quite 
gallantly. 

“Well, then, please find Clarence immediately — to- 
morrow, not later — and get him to make up at once 
with Miss Beverly. He will be ready enough to do it, 
and needs only a little urging. But don’t tell him a 
word about our own affair. We will give him and her 
a pretty little surprise. Don’t tell anything to anybody 
about our engagement, or our marriage plans. Then, 
the moment we are married we will * give a small 
theatre-party at which we will manage to have 
Clarence and Miss Leandra among our guests. 

“Ah, let us do it, Julian! It will be just the thing, 
as our wedding is to be so quiet. We can have one 
of those. nice little after-theatre suppers at Lepong’s. 
It will be just my chance to meet Miss Leandra. If I 
had encouraged her papa, I would have met her long 
ago. She is bound to be a great figure in society 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 273 

sometime — her father’s immense wealth and his com- 
manding position in business assures her a high social 
place. It is therefore a good idea to cultivate her, 
when it can be done so easily.” 

They called it a bargain. The plans were perfected 
then and there for this particular piece of “cultivation,” 
but in some respects the sequel turned out to be by 
no means what was intended by the chief plotter. 


274 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

Embowered in a romantic corner of a beautiful 
park in Chicago is a celebrated road-house whose 
owner at this time was a gambler of national noto- 
riety. It was advertised in report spread industri- 
ously among society people “as a quiet place, with 
numerous private winerooms and absolutely without 
intrusive, prying attendants.’’ 

Under the skilful management of a former politi- 
cian who had posed as a reformer, while fraternizing 
with the dissolute and unregenerate element, this 
particular road-house acquired great vogue with the 
ultra swift-paced among fashion’s votaries. 

It was the manager’s pretended aim to operate his 
place as “Ye country tavern” of the pseudo-type mod- 
eled after the rustic ale house of Sherwood forest in 
the time of Robin Hood. 

How far. he succeeded or failed in his design will 
never be known definitely; except, perhaps, in the 
somewhat unlikely event that the road-house man- 
ager himself tells the world in his memoirs — or hires 
some one to do the telling for him in the emblazoned 
page of history. 

Circumstances, however, have rescued from obliv- 
ion some of the dramatic episodes enacted amid 
stirring scenes under the picturesque eaves, or upon 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 275 

the broad verandas, of this tavern. It was only be- 
cause the things revealed had occurred wholly or 
partly in the open, that they became known at all. 
N^othing ever leaked out as to occurrences on the 
inside of this resort. Indeed, it was mooted abroad 
that all employes about the place were sworn to 
secrecy as the essential condition of securing their 
employment was condiment there. 

What is still more extraordinary, the employes 
were believed to have been sworn never to reveal 
that they had been required to take the oath of 
secrecy upon which their employment was condi- 
tioned. Thus the cast-iron chain of silence was 
double-riveted. 

But however all this may be, the secrets of this 
road-house were wonderfully well kept. Perhaps it 
was because of its reputation for secrecy that its cli- 
entele was so extensive among the very rich. Some- 
how there was abroad an impression that the very 
cream of all the swells of the “social sets” in the 
great fashionable clubs of millionaires, actual and 
expectant, could be ranked among the patrons of this 
solitary road-house. 

Situate at a convenient distance across the public 
park from the magnificent summer clubhouse of a 
great horse-racing organization, the resort was espe- 
cially well patronized on the evenings of Derby Day. 
And it was upon a “Derby evening” that its greatest 
scandal occurred. 

Two rich young men, one a banker’s son and the 


27 <^) the sword of the advertiser. 

other scarcely less prominent, were indiscreet enough 
to continue a fist-fight for a woman’s smiles from one 
room into another until at last they reached the 
piazza and the lawn, there to become coiled up in a 
combat that proved mortal for the financier’s son. 
His brains were dashed out with a champagne bottle 
in the hands of his antagonist. 

All the disgraceful details of the tragedy were com- 
municated by the police at the time to representa- 
tives of every newspaper in Chicago, but not a word 
was printed about the affair until many years later. 
Then one of the journals which suppressed the news 
at the time of the occurrence, made the alleged dis- 
covery of the murder. It was a discovery that was 
published only in connection with the mysterious 
murder or suicide of ‘‘the woman in the case.” 

Then it was claimed, after the silence of four years, 
that the police had suppressed the news of the deadly 
duel with the champagne bottles in the road-house 
lawn, when as a matter of fact it was the social and 
business influence of the young banker’s father that 
had effected the suppression in the newspaper offices. 
But in the meantime the old financier had followed 
his son to the grave, almost the last of his race and 
broken hearted from the burden of his grief and 
shame; the influence of his family and friends had 
waned or was forgotten ; and hence the belated pub- 
lication of the four-year-old tragedy. 

It was to this road-house that Algona Norwell, 
now Mrs. Julian Bartlett, requested her newly- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 277 

acquired consort to have the chauffeur speed them 
for the after-theatre supper she had planned for Miss 
Leandra Beverly’s entertainment. A spin of fifteen 
minutes over Michigan avenue and Grand boulevard 
took them to the spot. 

With the exception of the chauffeur, only four 
were in the party — Algona and Julian, Leandra and 
Clarence. At the theatre Randall had hovered around 
the portiers of the proscenium box occupied by the 
party. A few times during the intermissions in the 
play he could be seen in close and animated confer- 
ence with Julian and Algona together, and then with 
Julian alone. He departed, saying that he would 
meet the whole party at the road-house, and that he 
should then have perfected certain arrangements in 
which Mrs. Bartlett was interested. 

He had not yet reached the rendezvous when the 
automobile, bringing the little party, drew up be- 
neath the pleasant shade of the park trees at the road- 
house entrance. 

Supper was served in a private room. 

Never was Algona so beautiful and gay and frivo- 
lous as this evening. She bewitched Leandra— held 
her in the thrall of a curious fascination. Still, the 
great merchant’s daughter became at times conscious 
that there was something disagreeable, repellant 
almost, about the dashing wife of her admirer’s 
friend. 

It was the instinct of innocence. 

Algona felt its power, read the secret in the girl’s 


278 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

eyes, and temporarily was abashed by girlhood inno 
cence. But she made up her mind to play a certain 
part this night, and she resolved that she would'iiot 
be swerved from her course if the innocence of an 
angel instead of a schoolgirl should confront her 
now. 

Nay, the greater the innocence the greater the 
pleasure in the part. It was a scheme for vengeance 
and retribution. The innocent was to suffer for the 
guilty; punishment was to’ be inflicted vicariously. 

In her cruel, almost fiendish design this revengeful 
woman derived much satisfaction from perusal of the 
enigmatical legendry on the back of a new business 
card that the road-house manager had handed in 
person to the “initiates” of the part}/ as they entered. 
It read: 

The women all are rakes at heart, 

And rakes are welcome here. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER 


279 


V 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

With the supper strong wines were served. No 
attempt at first was made to get Leandra to drink 
any of the liquors; but her escort was encouraged to 
drink deep and often. 

Nobody was to pay any special attention to what 
Leandra was drinking until Randall had joined the 
supper party. Then he, with his easily assumed 
gallantry, was to make the discovery' that Miss Bev- 
erly was not having “a good time” and he was to 
pour her some wine forthwith. Should she gainsay 
the vinous treat she was to be laughed at and coaxed 
alternately, until she yielded to the inevitable. Such, 
in brief was the plot. 

What proved especially inevitable on this occasion 
was that there should be a big debauch. To that end 
everything was plotted to the last detail. 

In a second automobile, hired at a public garage 
like the other horseless vehicle, Randall in due course 
arrived. He was soon on the scene of the supper. 
Scarcely was he seated before he was shocked, or 
more correctly speaking, pretended to be shocked by 
the discovery that the champagne glass at Leandra’s 
elbow was without wine. With phenomenal effrontery 
he seized a cold bottle and, pouring the sparkling 


28 o the sword of the advertiser. 

liquid for Leandra, recited the following lines from 
a stanza of a well-known poem : 

1 

“Red wine, the nightingale cries to the rose ' 

That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine.” 

“Bravo, Randall, hie — well said, old fell — fell — ow 
— hie,” said Clarence, who was now in a maudlin 
state and on the verge of dead-drunkenness. 

“Why, have you not been drinking anything, 
Leandra, dear — ha, ha, that’s a good joke,” laughed 
Algona, lifting a foaming glass to her ruby-red lips. 
“Come, child', drink with me. It will not harm you. 
Just a few sips/’ ^ 

“Certainly it’s all right, Leand — ra — hie, hie; 
Leandra do take a little sip,” stuttered Clarence, by 
her side. 

In mellow, soothing voice Algona resumed : 

“Yes, take a little sip, dear; it will do you good; 
you look pale and need it; and just as Randall’s 
nightingale cried to the rose, the red wine will incar- 
nadine the cheek of tenderest sweetness. After 
you take a sip or two I will give you a nice little 
toast ; but I will not utter it unless you drink first.” 

Again her escort, whose condition of inebrity she 
failed to notice or understand, urged Leandra to 
comply with the request of the hostess. To the ex- 
citement and conflicting emotions of the moment the 
debutants at last yielded. 

Her first sip was hailed with a salvo of “bravos.” 
She heard herself styled “a good fellow” — the dubious 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 281 

compliment which so often is showered upon young 
and innocent men and women as they take the first 
step in the downward path. How perfectly dreadful 
she knew it would be in a girl of her status to drink 
wine in the general company of social gatherings. 
But she persuaded herself that the present occasion 
was an exception. She was with a small party of 
friends. All except herself partook of the wines. 
Why should she not be convivial also? She would 
know when to stop, she thought. But that was her 
great mistake. She did not, could not know when to 
stop, having no experience of the past to go by. 

Besides, when the others drank henceforward she 
could not be a laggard. The example of the imbibers 
of the effervescing draught was contagious. She 
joined in several toasts. Soon she was in joyous and 
festive mood. 

Her buoyancy was at last sufficiently marked for 
Algona — who, with Randall, was abstemious in 
secret — to venture the recitation of the following 
slightly altered lines of the Rubaiyat as the toast for 
Leandra : 

Ah, with the grape my fading life provide 
And wash the body whence the life has died, 

And lay me shrouded in the living leaf 
By some not unfrequented garden side, 

That even my buried ashes such a snare 
Of Cupid shall fling up into the air 
As not a lovelorn maiden passing by 
But shall' be overtaken unaware. 

Now all this ‘Reminded” Julian of lines which Ben 


282 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


King, the poet laureate of Chicago’s gruesome White 
Chapel Club, was wont to sing with effect. And 
Julian quoted these lines : 

Here’s a health to the dead already 
And hurrah for the next who dies. 

“Not at all; no one here wants to die; at least I am 
sure I don’t; what we want is life; abounding life and 
gaiety and pleasure,” said Algona with well-affected 
exaltation of spirit. 

“The crowded hours of glorious life that Sir 
Walter Scott extolled in the knights and lovers that 
were his heroes.” 

The speaker this time was Leandra Beverly; and 
if her voice had been the explosion of a bombshell 
greater surprise could not have ensued for the other 
members of the party — the members that had taken 
care to remain sober or partially sober — who, truth 
to say, were all, except Leandra’s escort and — yes, 
though we fain would not say it — Leandra herself. 

With a cruel, relentless look of triumph and of glee 
upon her face, so handsome, but now somewhat pas- 
sion-marred, Algona gave an almost imperceptible 
signal of the eyes to Randall and Julian. The trio 
arose to go. They affected surprise on finding that 
Clarence was unable to arise and that Leandra’s con- 
dition was little better than his. 

Wine had been spilled on Leandra’s gorgeous 
gown of ecru colored silk. To her escort, Clarence, 
the girl had bemoaned this accident until both lapsed 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 283 

into the soporific state that usually marks the climax 
of vinous stupor. 

“It is the stain on her soul that she will bemoan 
tomorrow and for the rest of her life/’ murmured 
Algona, whose beautiful gown of jet-black lace had 
not escaped the spilled wine in the crash of toasting 
bumpers. 

But Algona was not embittered by the accident. 
One spoiled dress more or less to her was nothing to 
grow lacrymose over. Besides, she found a certain 
satisfaction in the belief, which she secretly cherished, 
that in the unclarified grief of Leandra the stain of 
the wine was lamented only because it was a symbol 
of the stain from the carouse through which a dove- 
white soul had lost its innocence. 

“Come, let us go! the hour has come,” whispered 
Algona to Randall. 

Liveried waiters lifted, led and half-carried Clar- 
ence Halliwell from the private wine room into a 
secluded passage or corridor whence was a semi- 
secret exit for the out-paced in the liquor jousts. 
Between them, and in the wake of the frightened at- 
tendants, Randall and Julian, with some assistance 
from Algona, supported and all but carried Leandra 
in their arms. 

Arriving in the open, all the party were in “The 
lane of the maudlin,” as the lynx-eyed servants were 
wont to designate a rear driveway that wound in ser- 
. pentine course through the gardens and the park 
surrounding the road-house. With but little cere- 


284 the sword of the advertiser.. 

niony Clarence and Leandra were placed side by side 
in the rear seat of the automobile in which Randall 
had come to the supper. 

Before the start could be made Randall called aside 
the chauffeur and in a few hurried words gave him 
final instructions where to take the stupefied couple. 
It had been planned that Randall should follow at a 
discreet distance, whence he could watch in safety the 
working out of the plot that had been devised with 
so much care. Through some mistake or mishap an 
automobile that he ordered for his purpose had not 
arrived, but its absence he had not noticed until the 
auto bearing Leandra and Clarence had started away 
northward, or toward the city, at quite a brisk rate 
of speed. 

Then he suggested that the horseless carriage in 
waiting for Algona and Julian be utilized for trailing 
the other; that all three ride in the accessible auto, 
so as to observe events. 

‘^No sir, we will do no such thing,’^ said Julian, 
with an ugly scowl. “Our part — I mean the part of 
Mrs. Bartlett and myself — has gone far enough in 
this affair. It is time to call a halt. I am thoroughly 
disgusted. For the rest you can do as you please, 
sir. We are going home.’’ 

By this time Julian and Algona were seated. A 
word was spoken by Julian to the man at the lever 
and the machine pulsated and quivered and whirred 
away down the boulevard in a direction the opposite . 
of that taken by the other vehicle. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 285 

Although Algona had not uttered a word during 
her husband’s colloquy with Randall, her glances 
plainly conveyed to the young man a tender of her 
sympathy and encouragement. That was why he had 
not resented Julian’s words. 

After all, it was not for Julian’s sake that he had 
taken a leading part in the plot for this night’s 
mischief. No, it was for the sake of Julian’s beauti- 
ful wife. Not only for her sake, but at her command. 
He had never quite gotten over the first impression 
she made upon him and he rather admired the orig- 
inality and ingenuity with which she had escaped the 
snare he had laid for her. Besides, she possessed 
some of his secrets. In turn he possessed a few of 
hers. Here was the binding link between them. From 
recent indications he believed she was beginning to 
look upon him with favor, and was learning to dis- 
like and scorn Julian. 

‘Who knows what the future has in store for me?” 
murmured Randall. “It would never do to fail now, 
after I have arranged it all according to her wishes 
and commands. Yes, I must go ahead at all haz- 
ards. I must be able to report to her the sequel.” 

“Her husband is getting jealous! Silly goose!” 
he added. “She does’t care the snap of her rosy 
fingers for him.” 

He turned about and directed his footsteps to a 
’mobile livery only a few hundred yards away. In 
less than five minutes he had hired a horseless vehi- 
cle and, with a liveried chauffeur at the lever, was 


286 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Speeding northward on Grand boulevard, the direc- 
tion in which he knew lay the trail of the automobile 
carrying the unclarified couple — Leandra Beverly 
and Clarence Halliwell. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

Scarcely had the automobile bearing Clarence and 
Leandra proceeded more than a few miles in Grand 
boulevard, Thirty-fifth street and Michigan avenue, 
until another horseless vehicle than Randall’s could 
be noticed following them. It was a modest little 
run-about of the motorette type, and it was kept well 
in the wake of the first machine. 

Its occupants were Rudolph Cobb and the bump- 
bearing labor boss who was now coming to be gen- 
erally known by the quaint pseudonym of “Skyball” 
Warren. They are engaged now at stalking, and 
their quest is for a purpose. 

Warren, who is at the lever, had taken Cobb into 
his confidence and invited the sociologist to join him 
in this ride. They knew the identity of the driver at 
the lever of the auto ahead of them ; knew also the 
dazed occupants of his vehicle. They were fully 
aware of the plot, in which the daughter of one of 
Chicago’s richest merchants was to be the victim and 
holacaust that evening. 

It seemed that Warren was in a quandary about 
the strange conspiracy whose details had come to his 
ears in the roundabout way that all plots against the 
rich percolate to a labor boss in touch with the rank 
and file of his fellows. He had been asked to decide 
vvhether the labor-union chauffeur should betray the 


288 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


plotters to the girl’s father, or steer the automobile 
on this very night to the whited sepulcher named by 
Randall to the chauffeur who had told all to his 
union’s leaders. 

Without the aid of Cobb this labor boss, Warren, 
would give no decision, especially as his bump was 
unusually nervous this night. Besides he had not 
been able to find his mentor until the hour for action 
had almost arrived. So they came upon the scene 
opportunely enough, but were too late to accomplish 
a counterplot which they intended putting into force 
at the road-house before the after-theatre party broke 
up. It is their intention to circumvent and thwart 
the plotters, but the course of events now makes it 
necessary for them to bide their time. 

When the chauffeur of the vehicle ahead turned his 
machine west from Michigan boulevard instead of 
east — the direction of the Beverly mansion — it be- 
came clear to Rudolph and his companion that the 
plot for the wreaking of a diabolical scheme of ven- 
geance was to be carried out by a purchased work- 
ingman. 

“This thing must not be,” said Cobb to his com- 
panion. “It must be stopped — thwarted at any cost. 
Hurry up, or we’ll be too late and the mischief will 
be done.” 

“You want it stopped?” queried Warren, half 
quizzically. 

“Yes, let us make haste, or the doors of the whited 
sepulchre will have closed upon the girl, and her dis- 
grace will l)e accomplished.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 289 

“She is her father's daughter; why should the op- 
pressed wage-earners or their representatives raise a 
finger to save her?” 

“But the innocent shall not suffer for the sins of 
their parents, especially if the innocent be women and 
children. Besides, most workingmen having it in 
their power to do the deed of rescuing innocence and 
protecting virtue are as chivalrous and noble as we 
doctrinaires, in urging the socialistic ideal, are accus- 
tomed to claim that all should be.” 

“I believe you are right once again, friend Ru- 
dolph,” said the great labor boss. “Well, here goes. 
She shall be saved and that man in the* box as 
chauffeur shall be taught a severe lesson — suspended 
and fined; or expelled forever from the ranks of 
union labor.” 

A twist at the wheel of the controlling gear 
sent the runabout at great speed into the tracks of 
the other horseless vehicle. It happened that the 
latter was being sent over the rough pavement of 
Twenty-second street at a terrific pace. Only at the 
very door of the whited sepulchre was the pursued 
phaeton overtaken by the runabout. 

Before a move could be made to lift the young man 
and the maiden from the seat whereon they still sat 
in a daze, the labor autocrat gave a warning gesture, 
which did not fail of being seen and heard. His ap- 
pearance on the scene, with the socialist reformer, 
Cobb, was a shock to the professional chauffeur, but 
he knew better than to invite the penalty of expulsion 


290 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


from the chauffeurs’ labor union hy any attempt to 
ignore the great boss, or question his sway over any 
and all things within the purview of organized labor. 

Again he was beckoned at. This time an intima- 
tion was conveyed that speech was sought of him. 
He obeyed the signal and soon was at Warren’s side. 

It was a brief parley — this interview between the 
two labor unionists beneath the ^red-light glow of the 
whited sepulchre’s unlatticed windows. Still, it was 
a parley lasting long enough to give time for the 
arising of a terrible nemesis from those somber 
shadows — a nemesis which though partly a halluci- 
nation, was yet sufficiently real to cause the hand of 
retribution to fall heavily on Verrazano Beverly. 

The nemesis arose just at this moment before the 
eyes of Mr. Beverly, as he chanced to arrive at this 
very spot in time to recognize all persons in the 
party at the whited sepulchre’s doorsteps — including 
his own daughter. 

With a deep groan the merchant sank heavily into 
the bottom of the hired automobile in which he was 
making the rounds of the lurid district in quest of 
excitement. Just previously he had brought the 
vehicle to a stop. He was his own chauffeur and 
alone and partially in disguise — all of which were 
among his accustomed practices as a rounder moving 
fitfully o’ nights amid the allurements of the lights 
and shadows that so often fascinate the reckless 
rounders and the idle rich in the world’s greatest 
cities. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


291 


CHAPTER XLV. 

Before the brief parley ceased between the labor 
men, Mr. Cobb, the socialist, was drawn into it. He 
was told by Warren that the driver was willing to 
take the young people away but did not know what 
to do with them. 

^‘Take them round about upon the nearest boule- 
vards in the automobile for an hour or so, until the 
young man sobers up,” said Cobb to the chauffeur, 
now waiting, cap in hand. “Then tell the fledgling 
Lothario that it is against the rules of the socialist- 
labor organizations for a member of a driver’s union 
to deliver at any house not known to be her residence 
a lady in a condition that renders her incapable of tak- 
ing care of herself. Go, I say. Speed away at once. 
It will not be long before the fresh air of the drive- 
,ways will revive the twain completely. Your fee or 
fare no matter how large, will be safe enough. You 
know that the paid belong to very rich families.” 

“Yes, sir, there is no fear on that score; it is the 
failure to carry out orders.” 

“It is hardly likely that you got orders from 
either of your passengers, who are the only persons 
whose interests should rule in determining their des- 
tination,” replied Mr. Cobb. 

“But Randall’s displeasure will be awful, sir,” said 


292 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the chauffeur, addressing Warren. “Still, I always 
understood, Mr. Warren, that you and Randall are 
very close friends.’^ 

“Oh, that reckless youngster; he will yet be hung; 
even a socialist government would have to hang 
him,’’ said labor’s Robin Hood, with a sly laugh at 
the expense of Cobb and the cause so dear to him. 
“Why, yes, it is true I have befriended Randall — have 
kept him out of jail too long, I fear. But you, Mr. 
Chauffeur, need have no fear on the score of what 
Randall’s threats or rantings may be; or what form 
he may say his displeasure will take. I shall attend 
to him myself. So you may throw all the blame on 
me. Now, go ahead and do just what Mr. Cobb has 
directed.” 

“All right, sir. But, should they not revive before 
daylight, what under heaven shall I do with them? 
What can I do with them?” 

“Oh, they will revive all right in an hour; Ran- 
dall’s dope-mixture keeps its grip on mind and body 
only for that length of time,” responded Warren. 
“The effect of the drug that they probably were 
given will pass away in sixty minutes.” 

“But they may never wake up at all; they seem so 
stupid and lifeless.” 

“Nonsense, they will be all right soon. But I’ll 
tell you what we’ll agree to do. We two — Mr. Cobb 
and myself — will follow you around everywhere in 
this horseless runabout of ours, but at a distance 
sufficient to render it impossible for us to arouse the 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 293 

suspicion that we are on a trail, or spying upon your 
charges. Now go.’’ 

“But there is one other point,” said the chauffeur, 
musingly. “What shall I do with them when they 
wake up?” 

“That’s easy,” said Cobb. “Get from them the 
street number of their homes, and then deliver them 
at or near their doors, each at the proper place of 
residence.” 

“Oh, I know their homes,” said the chauffeur. 
“What bothers me now is that it will be broad day- 
light before they awake, as I really have my doubts 
whether they were not given too much dope.” 

“Oh, there he goes again with that silly idea that 
.they will never wake up again,” said Warren. “But 
as a matter of fact I see signs that they are already 
awakening, especially the young woman. Come, let 
us away at once or all will be spoiled with this talk 
that is delaying us uselessly.” 

It was true the young couple showed signs of 
awakening. From the girl’s half-opened lips, that 
resembled the leaves of a red rose in bloom, came a 
deep and troubled sigh, the utterance of which caused 
the young man to give one restless move of the limp 
left fingers with which, the while he slumbered, he 
was holding onto the bracelet of gold and precious 
stones encircling his companion’s shapely wrist. 

In another moment the chauffeur was mounted in 
his seat, and under the impetus of the power that his 
touch disengaged the throbbing vehicle sped forward. 
Behind it was the runabout bearing the great labor 


294 


Tlir: SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


boss and the socialist, both of whom seemed tireless 
in their self-imposed mission of protection for the 
innocent. 

‘‘I hope this young couple will have sense enough 
to get married as soon as possible after this night’s 
escapade,” said Cobb. “He owes it to her to make 
the offer, and it would seem that she may owe it to 
herself to accept him. Still, there is no telling just 
what a woman will do under such circumstances, and 
especially a rich and attractive young woman who 
feels that she is not likel}' to suffer for lack of 
suitors.” 

“Ah, I am so glad to hear you endorse marriage, 
since so many people have misjudged the socialist 
position in regard to their institution,” Warren re- 
marked. “It is clear that you are not in favor of free 
love and the social abominations free love would be 
expected to entail.” 

“Socialism, as its very name implies, is the friend, 
not the enemy, of the social order,” said Cobb with 
enthusiasm. “It is the friend and upholder of the 
family, the home, social purity, general education 
and the sanctity of the marriage state. Reasonable 
love, not free love, is the basis of socialism for peo- 
ple in the marriage relation. From all accounts it 
seems fair to assume that those two young people 
in the vehicle ahead must have a reasonable degree 
of love for each other. So they should be married 
at once, especially as they are not likely to suffer for 
food and clothes, pending the arrival of the co-opera- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 295 

tive commonwealth that socialists are striving- for 
and ultimately will establish.” 

“Friend Cobb, too much talk of socialism gives 
me a pain — in this nervous bump of mine,” said 
Warren. “Still, I will get this scamp, Randall, to 
set the marriage bee a-buzzing in the ear of this 
young fellow. No doubt that will suit Randall to 
a nicety. Marriage of the couple would suit the gen- 
eral scheme of our precious friend, as he can hardly 
be expected to report defeat to his patroness, the 
woman for whose sake he sought to carry out the 
deep scheme of vengeance that was thwarted only by 
our timely intervention.” 

“It is a good night’s work ; I will always be proud 
of it,” responded the socialist, quickly. 

A whirr in the distance caused the twain to peer 
ahead beneath the overhanging shade trees of the 
electrically lighted boulevards. In a few seconds a 
southward-bound automobile, with one occupant in 
the seat behind the chauffeur, dashed by at a tre- 
mendous gait, a rate of speed not contemplated even 
by the provisions of the ordinance against fast driv- 
ing. 

“Aha, it is Randall himself,” said Warren, in- 
stinctively lowering his voice to a whisper. “He 
must have been delayed in some way, and because 
of the worry, or his high rate of speed, he failed to 
recognize us, or the occupants of the vehicle ahead. 
No doubt he is deadcd for the Whited Sepulchre.” 

“Well, it is a good thing,” said Cobb, “that the 
young scoundrel is too late.” 


290 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

It was lucky that Mr. Beverly had brought his 
automobile to a full stop just as he made the exciting 
discovery of his daughter’s presence in such a place 
and under circumstances that he deemed disgraceful 
to his house. 

When he slid off his seat and fell limp and un- 
conscious in the bottom of the vehicle, nobody who 
happened to be about at the time seemed to realize 
his distress or to notice anything unusual. Perhaps 
his sudden pitching forward and queer descent from 
his seat had been noticed by some of the prowlers in 
the street; but they may have feared to offer aid, 
lest the stricken man should prove to be drugged and 
a lynx-eyed policeman or detective should mistake 
the person offering succor for^ the administrator of 
the drug, a thief in the guise of a good Samaritan. 
At all events, it was some time before anybody even 
so much as approached the vehicle that was at a 
standstill so inexplicably in midstreet. 

It is a policeman who offers aid at last. He had 
not seen the occupant of the vehicle glide from the 
seat; neither had he seen him jump out or leave. 
He had, however, seen the occupant of this same 
horseless carriage steer the vehicle into the street 
from the south some time before and go in the direc- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


297 


tion of the white sepulchre. So his curiosity was 
aroused and he went to investigate. He was too late 
to discover anything at all, Beverly having recovered 
and remounted his seat and started away in a north- 
erly direction just as the patrolman was within a few 
feet of the horseless carriage. 

But it was not long before the merchant changed 
his course from the north. He 'reversed and came 
southward again. He was doomed to make another 
unpleasant discovery. It had to do with Randall, 
whom he knew well, but only as the close friend and 
boon companion of Julian and Clarence. It was, 
therefore, another grave shock to his unstrung 
nerves when he recognized Randall entering the 
whited sepulchre. He saw the unoccupied automo- 
bile standing there in front. Not knowing that it 
was not the vehicle in which he had seen his daugh- 
ter — that it really was the machine in which Randall 
had arrived — the merchant assumed that his daugh- 
ter and the whole party which he had seen before 
were now within the precincts of the sepulchre. 

He was dazed, bewildered, driven almost to dis- 
traction by this blow, wholly imaginary though it 
was. His first impulse was to call upon the police 
to send a squad to the hated resort, that he so 
often had patronized, and rescue his daughter by 
force. But that course might involve him and his 
family in a fearful scandal, especially as he no longer 
had the strength or energy to go through the task 
of having the publication of such a story suppressed 


298 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

in the many local newspaper offices. Besides, had 
not his doctors warned him to avoid excitement if he 
would avoid “the fatal third” stroke of apoplexy, he 
having had two strokes already! 

But his excitement grew apace in spite of his ef- 
forts to calm himself — to steady his overwrought 
nerves, control his whirling brain. 

Mechanically he reversed his course again. As he 
turned he saw Randall emerge from the sepulchre and 
enter the automobile in waiting. He saw the young 
man lean forward as if giving an order to the chauf- 
feur, who straightway sent the machine forward with 
a bound in a southward course. Instinctively Bev- 
erly followed. 

It was hardly a chase, as the merchant was still in 
a haze of doubt and perplexity as to what he should 
do in the family crisis now upon him. 

Before he could decide whether he ought to make 
an effort to overtake Randall and ask for explana- 
tions, the automobile ahead had pulled up at the en- 
trance to the palatial Lake front hostelry at which 
Randall and Clarence and Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett 
were quartered all the time when in town, and where 
Mr. Beverly was an occasional guest. 

Quickly both chauffeur and automobile were dis- 
missed by Randall; almost as quickly by the mer- 
chant. 

A quest for Randall was pursued on the quiet by 
Beverly, but the young man was nowhere to be 
found. Mr. Beverly was told at the registry desk 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 299 

that Clarence Halliwell was then in bed asleep and 
could not be disturbed. He had been the guest of 
Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett at a theater party that even- 
ing, but had returned alone and retired to his rooms. 

So the clerks told the merchant. And then a light 
dawned upon him. He read through and through the 
plot for revenge, by which Algona visited the punish- 
ment of his unforgiven sin upon his innocent child. 
With a sigh that was full of meaning impossible to 
fathom he sank upon one of the luxuriously uphol- 
stered armchairs in the foyer of the hosterly. For 
some time he was plunged in deep thought, a picture 
of despair. Among the attaches of the hotel the 
great merchant’s plight in the love affair with the 
beautiful Miss Norwtll was well understood, but it 
was thought he had gotten over his disappointment 
and chagrin at her hasty marriage to another. Fur- 
tive glances were now cast at his wan and troubled 
face and his nervous, gripping, twitching fingers. 

He must have known that he was the observed of 
all, and with a dash of the decision that characterized 
him in business he quickly decided on his immediate 
course for the future. 

will take a room here tonight,’’ was the decision 
he registered mentally. ‘‘At daybreak I shall send a 
command to this young fellow, Halliwell, to marry 
my daughter at noon. Then let the future take care 
of^ itself.” 


300 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XLVIL 

Who can tell what Mr. Beverly suffered in mental 
anguish while preparing to retire for the night at the 
fashionable hostelry on the Lake front? His swift 
pace, which for years had been carried on sub rosa and 
scarcely suspected save by a few of his most intimate 
friends, was at last having its effect. Wreckage of 
his physical constitution had been almost accomplished, 
but through all the rush and excitement his faculties 
were unimpaired — until the time of the first stroke of 
apoplexy. That blow was sustained by him about the 
period of his quarrel with Algona Norwell, her mar- 
riage and his permanent estrangement from her. He 
had since then sustained a second stroke of the same 
dreadful malady. 

He had fully expected that the shock of the dis- 
covery as to his daughter’s supposed waywardness 
would bring on the third and always fatal attack of 
the disease. Except that he had an ever-present con- 
sciousness of his daughter’s escapade and his own 
proximity to eternity’s gates, this strong, shrewd, re- 
sourceful business man was now enmeshed in a mental 
haze, which held him in the thraldom of deep abstrac- 
tion at a time when, if he were himself, he would be 
found taking vigorous measures to protect he good 
name of his only child. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 30I 

With a moan so intense that it seemed his heart must 
be breaking, he threw himself face downward upon 
the soft-pillowed bed in the magnificent and luxuri- 
ously furnished suite of rooms to which the hotel clerk 
had assigned him. He had not undressed save for 
the removal, with the bell-boy’s assistance, of his ele- 
gantly tailored coat of finest imported fabric. 

Left alone, he lay there for many minutes, breathing 
so heavily that each respiration might have been ex- 
pected to be his last. He strove hard to collect his 
bewildered thoughts, but at first had only poor suc- 
cess. He could think of nothing except his own misery 
and the deep disgrace in which he believed his daugh- 
ter had become involved. 

‘‘Oh, my poor, dear child,” he groaned, in torture. 
“Oh, my poor child.” 

After this outburst his mind clarified in a measure. 
Then he recalled that he had neglected his child to a 
large extent, especially since the death of her mother. 
It never had been his custom to devote much attention 
to his daughter’s needs. He had left the care of her 
almost exclusively to his wife, her mother. His 
estrangement from Mrs. Beverly in the later years of 
her life had to a certain extent caused a sort of inter- 
ruption or hiatus in the love and affection the girl 
had borne him in her early life. He assumed that she 
had been made the repository of her mother’s con- 
fidence in so far as a good and careful mother could 
properly disclose to an innocent girl the sins of her 
father. Still he did not know positively that the dis- 
closures had been made. He simply felt instinctively 


302 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

that there had been disclosures, and his consciousness 
of guilt only added to the strength of his intuitive 
knowledge. 

After his wife’s death his sister was most of the 
time away on her mysterious and secret search for 
“the missing ones,” as she called them — her brother 
having no special knowledge of her purpose or move- 
ments. 

All these things made him timid toward his child. 
His fear that she would reproach him for having 
broken her mother’s heart by his neglect caused him 
to maintain a certain aloofness toward the girl at the 
very time which, he now saw in a dim sort of way, 
was the most critical period of her life. It was then 
that she needed all the love and tender care and pro- 
tection he could possibly bestow on her. But she did 
not get from him these, or any of them. Instead she 
was left practically all the time alone, a caged bird of 
plumage in one of the most platatial family homes in 
America. 

What wonder was it then, he thought, if she had 
fallen in with company not of the very best ? Ah, did 
he not know that it was not company of a good sort ? 
Was not the young fellow, Halliwell, a boon com- 
panion of Bartlett; also of that other ’scape-grace 
known as Randall? 

“I thought she had broken off some time ago with 
this young fellow and taken up with Dr. Barrett, the 
most sensible of all men,” muttered the* distraught 
father. “This is dreadful, dreadful. He is of good 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 303 

family and must marry her — must, that’s all. It is the 
only way to avert disgrace — dishonor is already — ” 

He did not put his thought into further speech, but 
with a bound that would have done credit to the 
sprightliness of a much younger man, he got out of 
the bed and reached for his coat. His next move was 
to ring for the bell-boy, who came immediately. 

‘‘Order a cab to be in readiness at the hotel door at 
once,” said the merchant. 

“It is quite late, sir — about 2 o’clock, sir — but I think 
one can be got stammered the boy. “Is it to be 
’mobile or horse, sir?” 

“No ’mobile this time — unless, by chance there 
should be nothing else available. But go; get any 
kind, only do it quick. If possible let it be a closed 
cab. Here, this coin is for yourself, but remember 
you must not tell anything about your movements to- 
night — unless you have to — only^ if you have to tell.” 

“All right, sir ; thanks sir,” said the boy as he left 
to give the call for the cab. 

In less than five minutes Mr. Beverly was in a closed 
cab, which was being driven rapidly south in Michi- 
gan avenue. 

Before he had been carried a quarter of a mile an- 
other vehicle started from the same hotel. It was an 
automobile and took the same course as the cab ahead. 
Besides the chauffeur, it has for occupants two men 
who seem to be in somewhat of a crouching attitude 
in the rear seat. Though the ’mobile could easily have 
out-sped the horse drawing the vehicle ahead, it was 
kept well in the cab’s wake for the first half-mile of 


304 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the run. But when Sixteenth street was reached and 
the cab bearing Mr. Beverly was seen to turn east off 
Michigan avenue, a mighty spurt was made by the 
horseless carriage trailing behind. It swung around 
into Sixteenth street in the tracks of the cab. Another 
minute and the horseless vehicle passed the horse. 

Then the ’mobile was brought to a sudden stop, and 
the occupants jumped out. They began to inspect 
one of the rubber tires of their vehicle, apparently 
thinking they had an accident and were ^^stuck.” 

It was a successful ruse; the cabman was thrown 
off his guard. He was just beside the ’mobile when 
two of the three men stepped boldly forward, and 
with revolvers leveled at his head and his horse, gave 
an order that he “throw up his hands.” 

He complied quite briskly and reined up his none 
too nimble steed. 

Hearing the menacing voices, the occupant of the 
cab began to draw the blinds aside with nervous hands. 
He had heard the buzz of the automobile as the ma- 
chine whirred by, though he yet had no suspicion of 
what was taking place. 

But he soon found out. Not more than a few inches 
had he drawn the blind when he found himself looking 
into the muzzle of a revolver. Instantly the cab-door 
was wrenched open, and the astounded merchant heard 
the strident command.” 

“Throw up your hands, sir; we want your money.” 

He did not seem to understand. He was dazed, 
dumbfounded and spoke not at all. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 305 

you don’t throw them up at once I will shoot,” 

said the man with the revolver. 

■ 

Up they went, feebly but high enough to show that 
acquiescence was meant. 

By this time the cabman had been handcuffed on 
his seat, his arms behind his back and the steel brace- 
lets holding them firm. He had been thus ponioned 
by the ‘^chauffeur,” who now transferred the aim of 
his weapons to the cab’s occupant, already under the 
cover of four revolvers. 

Putting aside his weapon the man who got Beverly 
to throw up his hands, now proceeded to search the 
merchant’s pockets. 

^^Oh, I have only a few hundred dollars,” said the 
aged victim. “Believe me, you are welcome to it, good 
sirs, if you think it will do you any good. It is in 
bills and gold in that pocket-book there in the inside 
pocket of my coat, left side.” 

“Seems you are very free with your money, sir,” 
said the searcher. “But we will take it to oblige 
you. Sorry you have not with you the whole $150,- 
000,000, or so, that you have taken from others, who 
needed it worse than we do.” 

“Taken it from others? What do you mean, sir? 
You are welcome to my money — or my life — but it can 
scarcely be a necessity of your calling to insult an old 
man, sir, who is powerless to defend himself.” 

“It could scarcely have been a necessity of your 
calling,” said the searcher, “to rob the poor of the 
necessities of life and send the daughters of the 
robbed into the streets, to become the prey of the rich 


3O0 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

scoundrels who make fortunes of over $100,000,000 
or so by robbing their employes of a large share of 
the profits that each toiler justly earns.” 

“Your toil, sir, will be likely to earn* you a share in 
the rewards of the gallows or the electrocution chair,” 
retorted the merchant with great spirit. 

“We might very properly shoot holes in you for 
that remark, but we won’t,” said the man making the 
quest for the merchant’s cash and valuables. “We just 
laugh at you, siri We are here just now to teach you 
a lesson that you and your class will the more and 
more have impressed on your brains or necks as the 
years go by. It is that the two classes in the com- 
munity can play at the game of robbery — the working- 
man as well as the employer.” 

“You a workingman! No, sir. Workingmen — real 
workingmen — are honest and honorable.” 

“Once they were, and if they are not so any more, 
you and your kind have only yourselves to blame,” 
said the other. “They are becoming very embittered 
against their oppressors, the money-hoarding, profit- 
taking employers. They are beginning to realize the 
absurdity and worthlessness of the code of honor and 
honesty that the employing classes exact of them. It 
is neither honorable nor honest for a workingman to 
allow his wife and children to starve, while he can 
come into the streets, as we do tonight, and rightfully 
possess himself of some portion of the earnings wrong- 
fully withheld and misappropriated from his dear 
starving ones at home.” 

“Preaching comes well from you, sir,” said the mer- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 307 

0 

chant, who forgetting his perilous position, allowed 
himself to become ironical. 

“The practice is better than the preaching,” retorted 
the searcher behind the fire arms. “The practice of 
taking — the practice of stealing and robbing, if you 
will — from the iniquitously rich to give to the unde- 
servedly poor, is a very pleasant occupation, I assure 
you. But as to the preaching business — we leave that 
to the lurid gospel-mongers in the pulpits of the so- 
called religious edifices or churches, that have been 
built and are maintained by ill-gotten wealth like 
yours.” 

“Who are you ? What are you, sir ? An anarchist, 
or a socialist? Or what, I pray ? You are a decidedly 
interesting person to encounter on an occasion of this 
kind.” 

“Not an anarchist; perhaps a socialist, but most 
certainly an honest workingman.” 

“Oh, I understand — working this side of the city.” 

“No, sir; working for a capitalist, but just now 
doing an act of simple justice.” 

“Whew ! Justice, what queer company for a god- 
dess !” 

“She’s blind, sir; yes, blindly righting wrongs; re- 
member it — as we are now about to leave you — re- 
member it, sir, for future reference ; righting wrongs ; 
that’s all.” 

“I suppose you are doing it according to the rules 
of your labor union. Of course, you have a secret 
union of your precious trade of footpad?” 


3o8 the sword of the advertiser. 

“Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but there really is 
no labor union in this highway business and no code of 
labor rules — unless the very simple trades’-union rule 
of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest; ‘Rob the rich and 
give to the poor,’ thus doing unto others as they 
should be done by.” 

“So you are the Robin Hoods of the labor move- 
ment ?” 

“If you care to put it that way, you may be right. 
Now, let me say au revoir. We must leave you. A 
policeman may take a notion to earn a portion of his 
salary. Don’t forget, sir, what we have been saying 
about righting wrongs. It may be worth money to 
you. Aha; ha, ha! We have been righting wrongs; 
and this thing that I have taken from you is really 
not yours — never was yours rightfully.” 

“Ha, ha I ha, ha I ha, ha I” the armed trio laughed. 

Then one of them whispered J;o another, the leader 
in the strange raid : 

“We should be going, professor. My nervous bump, 
the barometer of danger, signals that we must away.” 

And away they went, waving satirical farewell 
salutes to the cabman whom they had just released 
from the durance vile of handcuffs and of ropes. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


309 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 


When the men in the role of self-styled Robin 
Hoods had disappeared around the corner of Michi- 
gan avenue the merchant shouted at the cabman, 
who had whipped up his horse. Said the great man, 
now in calmer mood : 

^‘Pull up beneath that electric light across the 
way; I want to see whether the precious looters left 
me enough to pay your fare/’ 

^‘Oh, that will be all right, sir; there’s lots more 
where that came from,” replied the cabman. 

“Lots more, eh? But how do you know?” 

“And sure I’d be a queer one if I didn’t know. 
Don’t everybody know? Didn’t Turney, the bell- 
boy, tell me who you are ; that you were the Mr. 
Beverly who owns the big store.” 

“That I was Mr. Beverly. Well I fancy I am 
Mr. Beverly yet — am and was and will continue to 
be. But I warned that young rascal not to tell, and 
paid him will into the bargain.” 

“What’s the harm, Mr. Beverly; sure I won’t be 
after telling anybody, unless you want me as a wit- 
ness.” 

“But you are already after telling me.” 

“But that isn’t telling anything.” 

“How do you make that out?” 


310 THE .SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

^^Because all I told you was who you are and you 
knew that already/' 

'"Well, ‘you Irishmen can’t be argued with one lit- 
tle bit, though you are not stupid either.” 

course, we’re not stupid. If we were, we 
wouldn’t have known enough to capture the city hall 
and run this great country for the blooming Yankee 
blue-bloods,” said the cabman, laughing merrily on 
his box. ‘‘But can’t you see, sir, that I’m trying to 
keep amusing you, so you won’t feel bad after the 
fright.” 

“Fright? Not a bit of it. They didn’t frighten me 
a jot!” 

“F faith they would have frightened me, too, only 
they were so polite.” 

“That’s it, sir. ’Twas almost a joke even to me, 
who paid the piper. In fact, it seems almost worth 
the money.” 

“Well, here we are under the big light; and now 
you can see how much the jokers charged.” 

During the colloquy Mr. Beverly was partly lean- 
ing out of the cab, the door of which was still ajar. 
He held in his hand the pocketbook that he had sur- 
rendered to be looted by the holdup man. When 
he now unfolded it and looked within he was' 
astounded at finding that none of his money was 
taken. His gold coins, among which were several 
twenty dollar pieces, shone from the recesses of the 
purse. Besides, the paper money was there, in its 
proper place, and an actual count revealed the fact 
that not a single penny had disappeared. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 3II 

‘'What, sir, would you believe it? They did not 
take a penny.” 

This exclamation came from Mr. Beverly and he 
was almost breathless with surprise, as he gazed into 
the gaping purse. 

“Ho, ho; is that so?” said the cabman. 

“Yes, everything is just the same; nothing is dis- 
turbed in the purse ; not a dime missing !” 

“Aha, I thought they were a very strange brand 
of highwaymen,” said the man on the box-seat. 

“Strange, indeed!” said Beverly. “I wonder what 
could be their object?” 

“Oh, they are probably some of them well-to-do , 
socialist fellows — them scholars and professors and 
writers — who go around telling you and others what 
to do with your property, but who are never seen 
selling all their own goods and giving the money to 
the poor,” said the cabman with a shrewd laugh, as 
his steed, under the urging of the whip, resumed the 
journey to the Beverly home. 

But the occupant of the cab was not satisfied with 
the driver’s fantastic explanation of the motive for 
the holdup. He was sorely puzzled by the incident 
and naturally sought an adequate explanation. 

For some time he was thoroughly baffled. Then a 
thought that solved the riddle came to him like a 
flash. It must have been a startling thought, for it 
threw him instantly into a condition of greatest pos- 
sible excitement. 

With a quick and fearful movement he reached to 
tear open his vest and shirt bosom. But it was not 


312 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

necessary to use effort to that end. They were al- 
ready wide open. Instead of the chamois bag, with 
a treasured locket that the bag contained — which 
chamois bag and locket were now the objects of his 
excited quest — all that he found was a portion of 
the silken cord from which he had for years secretly 
worn the precious keepsake suspended around his 
neck. Now both the chamois purse and its contents 
were gone. While the holdup men had distracted 
the merchant’s attention in the repartee and badinage 
about the questions of abstract rights, they or one 
of them, very cleverly cut the cord and effected by 
stratagem the removal of a treasure in reference to 
which they must have known that the aged victim 
would have died rather than surrender it voluntarily. 

With a piteous groan at the shock of his discovery 
the merchant fell backward, stunned, in his seat. It 
was with some difficulty that the cabman aroused 
him on arriving, a few moments later, at the palatial 
city abode of the family of Beverly. 

“You haven’t found that they took anything?” ven- 
tured the cabman. 

He was assisting the merchant to alight and he 
had noticed his woe-begone appearance and the sev- 
ered cord protruding from his shirt-bosom. 

A dismal shake of the head was Beverly’s only 
answer. He dismissed the cabman and entered the 
house. 

Once inside the closed door he muttered to him- 
self, as in a dream, the answer that remained un- 
spoken to the cabman on the threshold. It was: 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 313 

“Yes, they have stolen what I would have died 
rather than yield up to strangers — that locket which I 
had worn in secret for half a lifetime and whose lapse 
into unknown hands, coupled with the identification 
of those two medallion pictures it contains, may 
easily lead to complications which would cause the 
loss of all I possess as well as the inevitable pauper- 
izing of my poor child, should legal proceedings be 
started before I shall have time to arrange or compel 
a settlement out of court/* 


314 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 


His first thoughts, after ceasing his brief soliloquy, 
were for his daughter. He stole softly to her por- 
tion of the great house, and was soon at the door of 
her boudoir. 

With straining ear, placed almost at the keyhole, 
he sought to detect her breathing, or the noise from 
some movement that would denote her presence in 
the apartment within. None came. All was silence. 

Fancy a father’s position under such circum- 
stances! 

He was in an agony of despair and doubt. It 
would not do to awaken the household. If the dis- 
covery of her absence from her father’s home is to 
be made, it should be arranged — must be arranged — 
to have the said discovery take place in the day-time, 
not at midnight or after. 

What was he to do? Softly and slowly he tested 
the door of the vestibule, with a view to obtaining 
a glimpse of the interior. He found the door locked. 
Still, that proved nothing. He knew it to be her cus- 
tom to keep her apartments always locked. 

He bethought himself of a pass-key he once had 
in his own den near the library, but it was a year since 
he had seen it. Still, he would now look for it at 
once; nothing else was to be done without making a 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 315 

noise of knocking that probably would awaken all 
in the house. So to the library he went, making his 
way as timorously in that great dimly-lighted man- 
sion as if he were a prowling burglar, not its lord 
and master. 

His quest for the pass-key was not successful, and 
he returned without it. He was in despair. 

Nothing now remained to be done but to knock; ' 
and knock he did, quite softly at first, then louder. 
He heard a rustle of silken garments, followed al- 
most immediately by a drowsy utterance of a person 
awakening from a sleep disturbed. ‘ He was satisfied. 
He now knows his child is here in her home and had 
been plunged in deepest slumber. He retreated at 
once, feeling certain that she was not thoroughly 
aroused. He lingered for some time in a nook at 
no great distance, but as she gave no further indica- 
tion of alarm, he withdrew to his den, a magnificent 
alcove in this same wing of the house and directly 
beneath the main boudoir of the suite occupied by his 
daughter. 

Here he threw himself into a reclining chair of 
the most luxurious and comfortable oriental pattern. 
Stimulants and cigars and cigarettes in profusion 
were piled or scattered on the fine hand-carved chif- 
fonier beside him; but he ignored them, or seemed 
to be unconscious of the lethal qualities in them. 

For hours he sat there, the veriest picture of de- 
jection and misery. He was nervous; his fingers 
twisted themselves often into knotty contortions; his 


3i6 the sword of the advertiser. 

eyes were staring wildly ahead — seemed almost ready 
to start from their sockets as they peered forth into 
the shadowy darkness of that vast room, lighted fit- 
fully, and at best but dimly, by reflected moonbeams 
escaping from behind the midnight clouds. 

Could the pall of the veiling shadows have been 
lifted it would have been seen that the expression on 
this man’s face was that of a hunted, hounded, haunted 
adventurer or outlaw planning the details of a last des- 
perate battle which he knew must soon be waged 
against overwhelming odds from some vantage point 
in one of his lairs amid the fastnesses of mountain and 
gorge, or the almost impregnable fortresses of nature’s 
wilds. His scorn of a young woman, whom he had 
bent to his will, he knew had gained for him her im- 
placable hatred. Too late he had discovered some of 
the secrets of that woman’s birth and the ominous sug- 
gestion of her early associations. He knew now that 
she was capable of limitless revenge; that her natural 
cleverness and cunning were equal to her daring, and 
he felt her clutching fingers in every strand and fiber 
of the great web of financial and business disaster that 
was now enmeshing him and dragging him to his 
doom. 

Yet this man was rightly regarded as one of the 
very rich men of Chicago and the nation, and the sum 
of his happiness was supposed to be complete. He 
had striven to crowd into his life an experience of all 
the things pleasurable and exciting that money and 
worldly station could obtain. He had thought that 
when he should have scaled the heights and sounded 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 317 

the absyms of human pleasure, he would be ready to 
give a quit-claim on the bond of fate and *^take his 
chances” in the state beyond the grave. He was a 
good deal of a materialist and agnostic; and but for 
one appalling circumstance it is doubtful if he would 
have a shadow of remorse for any of the frailties on 
the human side of his life. The one appalling circum- 
stance was his belief at this time that his own off- 
spring had been victimized by his own victim, and 
that) a deep plot to procure the disgrace of his child 
was a part of the gigantic scheme to wreak vengeance 
upon himself. It was this thought alone that gave 
him any twinge of conscience. For himself, person- 
ally, should he go down in the most sensational crash 
of the ' mercantile world, he had not the least glim- 
mering thought of fear or panic. But for the sake of 
his daughter’s future, her happiness and career, he 
had become in a few hours a craven coward, with the 
stings and pangs of a great remorse gnawing deeply 
into his very soul — a remorse that brought home to 
him the enormity of his sins against social purity — a 
remorse that now made him blame himself as the 
direct cause of whatever misfortunes had befallen or 
should befall his daughter at the hands of the scorned 
and furiously revengeful young woman whose inno- 
cence he had destroyed sub rosa. 


3i8 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER L. 

Exhausted nature gave out and the merchant fell 
into a deep but profoundly troubled sleep. In his slum- 
bers he often murmured his daughter’s name. His 
unconscious calls for her were weird and plaintive. 
They were piteous in the extreme, sounding alternately 
in high and low voice and accompanied by a perfect 
storm of agonized groans and moans and sighs. 

Hours after sunrise he was found by a household 
lackey who softly drew together the sumptuous rugs 
and portiers around the master’s limp form and pres- 
ently reported him to his daughter’s maid, Louise, as 
sleeping peaceably on his favorite divan. 

It happened that the daughter had overslept this 
morning. She awoke listless and somewhat fatigued. 
Her first thought was for her father. Her next 
thought was for Clarence, but it was not so kindly a 
thought of him as was usual with her. Then she 
suddenly was conscious that she had a dull headache. 

It was a sort of headache that she felt was new to 
her. Certainly she never before had experienced any- 
thing quite like it. Instinctively she associated it with 
her outing of the night before. Her thoughts were 
thus brought back to Clarence again. Ah, this boy 
Clarence ! 

She did not know just what to think of him this 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 319 

morning. Did she not get into strange company with 
him last evening? And was it not Clarence who 
directed her steps in those strange places? Had she 
not trusted him too far? Was he not unworthy of her 
confidence ? Should any innocent girl continue to 
trust a young man who had led her into the swift paces 
of carousing places about whose character some ques- 
tion may justly be entertained? Above all, should 
the attentions or courtship of such a reckless young 
man be accepted in the future by a girl valuing her 
reputation as her life? 

In brief, was Clarence worthy of her respect any 
more? Could she honor him? Could she lov — ? 

Quickly her thoughts sped onward upon these lines. 
Her conclusions were distinctly unfavorable to Clar- 
ence. 

Then she recalled how her father had warned her 
repeatedly against cultivating Clarence. She remem- 
bered that the parental warning was directed against 
the young man chiefly because of his mode of life, 
reputed to be as swift as the swiftest of the young 
bloods of the local wealthy coteries — unusually wild 
and reckless and dissipated as those young bloods were. 

A twinge of pain at the back of her head as her 
maid began to dress her hair, caused Leandra’s 
thoughts to turn anxiously but secretly to Dr. Barnett’s 
headache remedies. She wondered whether she should 
have to tell him her views as to how she may have 
got the headache ? Are all headaches not alike ? Why 
should it matter what caused them? Would not the 


320 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

same remedies cure all sorts of headaches? Would the 
doctor, in case she should call upon him for medical 
treatment, inquire what seemed to her to be the cause 
of this particular headache ? 

“Yes, he would; he always inquires/’ she muttered, 
unconsciously, forgetful of the maid’s presence. 

“Nobody has made any inquiries this morning?” 
declared the maid, scarcely more conscious than her 
mistress of any meaning in the utterance of words 
unstudied and uncalled for. 

“Is father well this morning, Louise ? Or have you 
heard yet from James?” 

“From James? Why, bless you, yes. He brought 
word that your papa would breakfast with you this 
morning at 9.” 

“Indeed? What time did James bring that mes- 
sage ?” 

“Half an hour ago; but there is lots of time. It is 
only 8 :45.” 

“Ah, I must meet him, then,” said Leandra, “must 
meet papa the very morning that I would most like to 
avoid it. Is it ominous, dear Louise? Will he scold 
me for keeping late hours? Could he have heard or 
seen or known anything about last night’s happenings ? 
Ah, I am done with Clarence. Remember, Louise 
dear, that you must never again admit him to my pres- 
ence, no matter how persistently he may plead.” 

“Well, you need have no fear about last night at any 
rate. Miss Leandra,” said the maid. “Your papa did 
not reach home until nigh three o’clock, James says; 


/ 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 32 1 

and I know that you arrived an hour before that time, 
as I put you to bed with my own hands.” 

“Gracious sakes!^ You must never tell anybody that 
I arrived home so late at night, and had to be put at 
once to bed. That would never do, you know.” 

“Of course, it wouldn't do at all, Miss Leandra, 
and that's the very reason I am not saying anything 
about it.” 

“Thanks ; thanks, very much, Louise. I shall never 
forget your nice, good ways. But are you sure you 
have dressed my hair as father likes it — plain, combed 
low upon the forehead and all the way around, and 
parted exactly in the middle?” 

“If you will look in this hand mirror you can see 
it is exactly as he likes, my dear.” 

“I’ll take your word for it, Louise dear, as my head 
whirls so terribly I simply can’t see anything in the 
mirror. Now, isn’t it time to go downstairs? I must 
not be late at table when my presence is requested — 
that would never do.” 

“But you will not be late; have no fear, your papa 
loves you.” 

They were now on the way and already had begun 
to descend the grand stairway of the magnificent home 
of the Beverlys. Leandra was sad and sombre. Her 
head was bowed upon the maid’s shoulder, and she 
seemed about to give way to an outburst of weeping. 

“Sweet mistress, you must calm yourself,” whis- 
pered the maid. “Remember how often you have told 
me that you thought tears were unbecoming in the 
women of the Beverlv familv. So don’t be worried, 


322 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

especially as you really have nothing to worry about. 
What if you do find it necessary to break off with that 
young man, Clarence? There are others — many oth- 
ers — and among them some of the best blood in all 
the land. Not one of them who would not be de- 
voted—’^ 

‘‘Yes, perhaps, they would; but as a rule they are 
bores to me. Of course, there is Doctor Barrett, whose 
praises both my papa and Aunt Sophonisba are never 
tired of sounding — Aunt Sophonisba because, as I 
believe, she one time had personal hopes in reference 
to the doctor, much her junior though he is — my papa, 
because the doctor’s moderate and temperate and hon- 
orable life afford some marked contrasts that are not 
lost upon poor, dear pa’s own conscience.” 

“Hush, there they are in the breakfast room, both 
awaiting you.” 

“Dear Louise, you are so good and sweet. Let me 
go in alone; but please don’t go far away. Remain 
near the door. Don’t go farther away than the vesti- 
bule on any account. I have a foreboding that I shall 
grow faint when I face father, and I may need you 
any moment. I really am too ill to be up and about, 
and I feel that I should be in bed. But it is not like a 
Beverly to shirk responsibility. Now, it is just 9 
o’clock and I am going inside. Be sure that you stay 
within easy call.” 

In another moment Miss Leandra was warmly 
greeting her father and her aunt at the breakfast table. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


323 


N 


CHAPTER LI. 

Soon after James, the butler, had served the last 
cup of aromatic tea at the Beverly family table, he 
withdrew into the ante-chamber, shutting as he made 
his exit, the heavy door of the spacious breakfast room 
behind him. 

In the vestibule he halted. There with Louise he 
exchanged some whispered remarks and many signi- 
ficant, almost eloquent glances. He had been told to 
withdraw to the ante-chamber and await the custom- 
ary summons on the old fashioned silver handbell that 
always stood shining and polished at the master’s 
elbow on the family table. 

For half an hour the family were alone, not a sound 
or the faintest scrap of conversation being audible 
from the depths of the massive-walled room. Then 
Miss Sophonisba emerged. She was unusually 
agitated as well as unusually serious of mien. She said 
she was just going for a drive, and told Louise and 
James that “the family chat was all over.” 

As the aunt disappeared in the maze of the man- 
sion’s great halls, Leandra, pale and trembling, slipped 
quietly from the tea room. She signaled to her maid, 
who was quick to come to her aid. In a voice chok- 
ing with suppressed tears she requested to be assisted 
upstairs to her rooms. 


324 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


They began ascending the grand stairway, but had 
taken only a few steps when the master of the house 
appeared in the doorway of the tea room. He was 
very nervous and excited and had to grasp the door- 
jam to steady himself. He said: 

‘^ames, go at once to the telephone and call Dr. 
Barrett to attend my daughter — who is ill and threat- 
ened with prostration. And, when he comes, I want 
you to be sure that he does not leave the house until 
he has a talk with me.” 

On hearing this message Leandra broke down and 
sobbed piteously. She was unable to proceed further 
and it was necessary for Louise to obtain assistance 
from two house maids in getting to her rooms the 
young mistress of the house of Beverly. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


325 


CHAPTER LIL 

In response to the telephone message from Mr. 
Beverly’s butler, Dr. Barrett called at the Beverly 
mansion and remained there one whole hour. In the 
afternoon he called again. Next day he was again 
a visitor ; after that twice daily for nearly a fortnight. 

One day he took Miss Leandra for an afternoon 
ride in his automobile. 

It was then announced formally that he was en- 
gaged to marry the beautiful daughter of the house 
of Beverly — one of the richest heiresses in any land. 


326 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

Beneath the shadows of the Auditorium tower and 
well within the range of vision from the spacious 
windows of two great hotels, than which few or none 
more fashionable can be found in all the world, might 
be seen at the date of this narrative a high-fenced 
but vacant lot said to be worth the fabulous sum of 
$ 3 , 000 , 000 . 

Covered with junk and rubbish, old planks and 
squalid rags and not a few rusty tin cans, this piece 
of unimproved land was much more valuable than a 
sand hill of Arizona’s desert — the arid wilderness, 
unproductive and dreary, being nature’s proper guage 
of value for this particular patch of loam and quick- 
sand. 

Solely because of the presence or propinquity of 
Chicago’s 2,000,000 population was this small seg- 
ment of land more valuable than would have been an 
equal area in the desert. It was still as unproductive 
as the barren wilds of the far western plains. All 
through the years and decades of Chicago’s marvelous 
growth and progress, this patch of land has been held 
for speculation as unimproved property, with the tax 
charges at a rate little more than nominal. 

Behind the bill-board fence inclosing this wilder- 
ness of rubbish one “Goosey,” a tramp, was wont to 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 327 

\ 

make his habitation at such times as the city police 
were so busy defending themselves from charges of 
graft and scandal that they could not spare the time 
to evict him. His habitation was a dugout, quaintly 
rigged up with an old shaak for a cupola and a stove- 
pipe joint for a chimney. Guests at the fashionable 
hostelries had their esthetic tastes. offended time and 
again by Goosey^s presence, his mysterious comings 
and goings and his primitive mode of life in the dug- 
out beneath their windows. An avalanche of com- 
plaints and protestations was sent to the City Hall 
by the persons with the offended sight and nostrils. 
Still, the police could not be got to raid the objection- 
able dugout. Even a tramp had rights, they said, and 
there was other business to occupy the peace guar- 
dians. Besides, the man Goosey had not been com- 
plained of by the absentee land-owner, who refused 
so far to ask that the dugout or its occupants be sup- 
pressed as a nuisance. 

It was only when the tramp began to use the vacant 
lot for financial gain that he ran foul of the land 
owner and the police. One fateful day he hung out 
across the rear fence in the alley off Congress street 
a small sign-board with a picture of a goose in jet- 
black pigment, with this piece of legendary in flaring 
Vermillion wood-paint : 


GOOSEY’S INN ; LODGING ONE CENT A 

NIGHT. 


328 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

That sign was his undoing for the nonce. Police- 
men swooped down upon the dugout, bore away the 
tramp Boniface and his tramp lodgers, or guests, and 
confiscated the sign of Goosey^s Inn. 

He returned alone some months later, and was left' 
unmolested in the rehabilitated dugout which this time 
failed to flaunt the Sign of the Goose. 

Now, this particular vagrant while making his liv- 
ing by his wits, had more than the average vagabond’s 
wit whereby to ply his avocation. He was, in fact, 
the visible wreck of the somewhat invisible genius of 
the Chicago Art world of earlier days. He had been 
a newspaper artist of the crude epoch in that profes- 
sion. His cartoons and sketches in ink and pencil be- 
came unsalable in time, his work having degenerated 
— under the influence of strong drink and drugs — 
until it became too obviously coarse, pessimistic and 
vulgar for reproduction in even the most ultra-sen- 
sational journals of the day. 

It chanced that “Goosey”, whose real name appears 
to have been Rembrandt Van Dyke Swayne, was 
abroad in the streets near his cave on the evening of 
the storm which John Lodge observed with the tele- 
scope on the balcony of the Auditorium tower. From 
• the roof of the big building on Congress street a dark 
object that flapped and rattled in a queer sort of way 
was dropped or fell upon the pavement almost at 
Goosey’s feet. Furtively he examined it. He saw at 
a glance that it was a camera of newest design, his 
experience in the art department of newspapers hav- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 329 

ing made him somewhat of an expert in knowledge of 
photographic apparatus. 

Peering cautiously around to see that no one was 
observing, he became satisfied that the streets were 
deserted during this moment of the storm’s greatest 
fury, and that it would be safe for him to bear away 
the instrument for closer examination in his subter- 
ranean quarters behind the big fence across the street. 
He had, been deep in his cups this night, as usual, and 
almost attained the maudlin state so easy of attain- 
ment in the advanced stage of the disease of dipso- 
mania. Still, he retained sense enough to know that 
he had made a find this night which might possibly 
be of value in the future. He might be able to sell 
this camera, or get a reward for its return. Then — 
more drink ! So he picked up the instrument and 
wobbled along into the alley at the angle in which it 
was his custom to climb the fence — somewhat lower 
here than elsewhere — or tumble over it into the vacant 
lot where he had his habitation in the abandoned but 
re-excavated cellar of a small residence destroyed in* 
Chicago’s great fire of ’71. 

How Goosey managed to get the instrument safely 
across the fence and into his quaint and mysterious 
lair on this dreadful night will probably never be 
known. All that history relates is that he got it there. 
But what was more important is that he soon dis- 
covere'd that one of the sensitized plates in the focal 
tube of the instrument showed well-defined outlines 
of a photograph which he saw at once, with the aid 
of his smoky and ill-smelling lamp of kerosene, was 


330 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

likely to prove an exceedingly vivid picture of an auto- 
mobile with two occupants — a well-dressed man and 
a plainly dressed girl — the twain appearing silhoutted 
in the always exceedingly interesting act of oscula- 
tion. 

In the dark corners of his cellar Goosey had the 
negative of the picture so well developed in a few 
days that he instantly identified the man in the auto 
as Verrazano Beverly, by whose firm he was jDnce em- 
ployed and whom he knew personally in face and feat- 
ure as well as he ever had known any of the hobo 
fraternity in later years. 

It now was perhaps inevitable that the other hoboes 
of Goosey^s wide acquaintance should hear about the 
interesting picture that their occasional Boniface had 
picked up somewhere in Chicago's streets. They gos- 
siped about it and seemed to know the identity of the 
great man in the picture. They also had their jokes 
about his cavalier way of kissing the country girl in 
the auto with him. 

To all this there was a sequel. But its import is 
best disclosed in the words of the unregenerate 
Goosey, a chief actor in the little drama. He had 
known for years that the good name and lustre of her 
somewhat ancient family had always been guarded 
with deepest pride and tenderest solicitude by Miss 
Sophonisba Beverly. And to her, about this time, he 
sent a very remarkable letter. 

It was as follows: 

Miss Sophonisba Beverly : 

Good Lady — If you will drive to the alley opposite the 


TPIE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 33 1 

Congress Street entrance to the Auditorium building, and 
send your footman into the vacant lot behind the bill-board 
fence at that point and have him whistle softly three times, 
I will come forth from my habitation in that dreary patch 
of rubbish and tell you what details I chance to know about 
a curious mystery that concerns your distinguished brother. 
It were best that your visit be made under cover of the 
night, at as early a date as possible and not later than the 
current week. Delay may mean much that you would like 
to have avoided, and all next week I shall be occupied with 
preparations for the fall convention of hoboes to be held 
very soon in a distant state of the far northwest. 

Now, good lady, it is only right that I should give you in 
advance some inkling of the mystery to be solved by you or 
others in reference to Verrazano Beverly. Briefly, I may 
say that it has to do with a certain picture of him taken with 
a camera that must have been equipped with an X-Ray at- 
tachment. This picture shows him wearing secretly a locket 
of unique design. It also shows him caressing a rustic- 
looking girl who certainly was not his wife, but possibly 

might be his daughter. Yet that is of no great consequence, 

as the twain are simply riding in an automobile. 

What will be more likely to interest you is that a certain 
misbehaven youth named Eddie Randall has seen the picture, 
and may attempt to use his knowledge for blackmail, if he is 
not quickly headed off. He heard from some of my gossipy 
hobo friends that I had the queer picture of Mr. Beverly in 
my possession. He lost no time in coming to see it. I saw 
at once that he smelled game. Instantly his jawbone fell 

and his eyes bulged out with amazement. He asked many 

questions about the strange phenomena of the lockets — for 
there are two of the trinkets in the picture, one shown 
around the neck of your brother and the other around the 
girl’s neck, the two baubles being exactly alike in shape 
and size. 

Well, Randall suddenly had a perfect craze to borrow or 


332 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


buy the picture, and failing to receive it, he would have 
stolen It if I had not hidden it securely away while his 
back was turned. Then he begged me to make for him at 
once a “proof” or copy of it with my own hands. In that 
attempt he also failed. But he persisted in his pleading 
and vainly hovered around a great deal, darkening with his 
somber shadow my underground den for hours and hours 
at times. At last he made the threat one day that if he 
could not obtain the picture of the lockets, he would “go me 
one better” and obtain possession of the lockets themselves, 
or one of them at least. I have not seen him since. 

Though I am a poor deuce of a tramp I have seen better 
days and have some pride left. Were I to tell you my real 
name you would remember it as that of one who was not 
unknown to fame a generation ago. It is my firm purpose 
not to allow this picture — which I discovered and obtained in 
a most legitimate way — to be used for any scheme of black- 
mailing scamps and scoundrels. But, as I said before, I am 
a poor deuce of a hobo, and I need a little money. So if 
you decide — after seeing a proof of the picture— that it would 
be worth money to you to secure possession of all the proofs 
and plates and copies in existence, I would consider whether 
I could not part with all of them — the whole edition as it 
were — for a trifle of a few thousands of dollars. Moreover, 
I would give you my guarantee or affidavit that not another 
copy, plate, or picture — or any possible chance of producing 
the same — would exist, save what would have been placed 
in your hands, and amply within your control. 

Before concluding, I deem it just as well to say that no 
raid by police or constables, or other emissaries of the law, 
can possibly succeed in accomplishing the destruction of the 
photographs and proofs. Only one way remains — the way 
that I have indicated. Proofs and copies which have been 
made and are hidden away will be accounted for, every one. 
Should you make the purchase and order the pictures de- 


'I'HR SWORD OF TTTR ADVERTISFR. 


333 

livered into your possession, you need not entertain the least 
doubt that you will get them all. 

Sincerely and with great respect, 

An Altruist. 

In a postscript Goosey gave most explicit directions 
as to how and where he could be reached with a mes- 
sage any time before the date which he named as that 
set for the hegira to the hobo convention. 

When Miss Sophonisba received this startling letter 
she had about exhausted every clew in her search for 
the mysterious “lost ones,” and temporarily had aban- 
doned the quest. Somehow her ardor in the still hunt 
was now rekindled — was all ablaze once more; and 
fuel was added to the flame when she learned from 
her brother's own blanched lips that the locket he 
wore had been stolen by holdup men — the same locket 
which contained the evidence of the identity of the lost 
ones, the locket which she had received nearly 20 
years before from the hands of a dying woman who 
had been her schoolgirl friend and which she had per- 
mitted her brother to wear only after he had begged 
and pleaded for it because it contained a picture of his 
dead sister. 

With Goosey's letter in her hand and an expres- 
sion of mingled worry and anticipation on her kindly 
face, we find Miss Sophonisba in her carriage near 
Goosey's place early on the evening following the rob- 
bery of her brother by the mysterious holdup men. 
She is waiting for the return of a liveried attendant 
whom she has sent to find Goosey, or ascertain when 


334 the sword of the advertiser. 

an interview could be had with that mysterious dweller 
in a catacomb. 

Instead of returning with Goosey the messenger 
came back accompanied by a tall, angular, dark- 
bearded man, whose kindly and tender blue eyes com- 
pletely redeemed the otherwise somewliat harsh and 
sinister impression conveyed by his remarkable and 
striking appearance. 

Brushing past the attendant and stepping briskly 
to the open window behind which Miss Beverly sat 
half-concealed by the shadows in the carriage — the 
stranger saluted her respectfully and said : 

‘^If I am not mistaken you are Miss Sophonisba 
Beverly, sister of a distinguished Chicagoan and a 
lady well and favorably known for her philanthropic 
work among the poor 

'‘Truly, sir,” she said, “it is very kind of you to 
say such nice things about my humble self, sir. My 
name, as you have surmised, is Sophonisba Beverly.” 

“Well, then, I am very glad that I have met }T)U 
here at this time,” said the stranger. “This broken 
man — this erratic but fallen genius of an epoch now 
passed away forever — this former newspaper artist 
nicknamed Goosey — has been telling me about the 
letter he wrote to you a day or two ago. It chances 
that to certain .friends of mine, and in a sense to my- 
self as well, the experiments, which this Mr. Goosey 
is making, or having made, with this remarkable 
photograph are deeply interesting. Personally, I feel 
only a scientific interest in the picture of your brother 
and his fair companion — supposed to be his beautiful 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 335 

daughter, I believe. It appears that the photographic 
apparatus which took the picture was equipped with 
a Roentgen X-ray appliance made in Germany. It 
is because of the X-ray’s work that those lockets, worn 
secretly as they must have been, are shown on the 
photographic plate quite clearly, and through such 
distinctively opaque substances as woolen clothing 
fabrics. 

'‘It is unmistakably an X-ray photograph of the 
two busts — so much is conceded by all who have seen 
it. But the most interesting disclosures imaginable 
are occurring as the history of the photograph is being 
unraveled. A freak picture was what everybody called 
it at first. But that view is being modified. Truly, 
there seems to be none of the freak about it, except, 
perhaps in one particular, and it is doubtful whether 
that can rightly be called freakish at all, as it may turn 
out to be a scientific veritv.” 

A little cough or gasp and a stealthy movement with 
a handkerchief in the carriage caused the speaker to 
pause. Then Miss Beverly said in a distinct but trem- 
ulous voice : 

"Please continue your remarks, sir. I am deeply 
interested, very deeply, I assure you.” 

"I was speaking of the photograph’s history and its 
possible value to science,” resumed the stranger. 
"Well, I have traced its history, which in itself is 
decidedly interesting. It appears certain that only 
one photographic apparatus equipped with the X-ray 
has been brought to this country. It was in use here 
in Chicago quite recently, and there is hardly a doubt 


33^ THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

but that it is the identical instrument upon whose 
sensitized plate this man Goosey found the strange 
picture which shows your brother and his attractive 
companion riding in an automobile among the clouds.” 

"'Among some landscape objects that seem like 
clouds I suppose ?” queried Miss Beverly. 

"'No, they are real clouds that show in pictured out- 
line on the plate, and that is just the wonderful thing 
about the whole affair — the one phase of this X-ray 
photographing that constitutes a fascinating mystery 
whose unravelment may mean a new discovery in 
science.” 

""How and when and by whom was the picture 
taken?” asked Miss Sophonisba. 

Before the stranger could reply she added these 
words : 

"I had not heard of the picture before getting this 
letter of, Mr. Goosey’s and I have not been talking 
about the strange affair to anybody.” 

"'Nothing is definitely known as to those points you 
speak of, but they are among the most intensely inter- 
esting phases of the problem,” said the stranger. 
"When the young man who imported and personally 
had been using the Roentgen photographing apparatus 
was found and shown the cloud-picture of the auto- 
mobile, he flatly refused to talk about the matter. It 
has leaked out, however, that he was not surprised, 
and one account had it that he exclaimed in a sort of 
soliloquy as he viewed the cloud-picture, "What a 
strange sequel to that wonderful electric mirage !’ But 
he has not claimed either the camera or its mysterious 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


337 


output. It appears he was in the government weather 
office in the Auditorium tower on the evening of that 
last dreadful storm ; that with a telescope which he had 
permission from the government’s representative to 
keep in the belfry of the tower he was observing the 
electric display in the heavens ; that his vigil was re- 
warded with the vision of this marvelous phenomenon 
of the electric mirage projecting among the clouds the 
images of the trees and the roadbed of some boulevard, 
with your brother and his auto and his companion 
appearing in the scene ; that by accident or design the 
observer touched the photographic button and that just 
then the excitement of the occasion, or the strength 
of the tornado — or both these influences in combina- 
tion — caused him simply to lose his hold or his con- 
trol of the instrument, which fell from his hands, as 
he stood upon the belfry’s balcony, and was swept 
away into the abyss of darkness. 

“Next day the telescope was recovered. It was 
found upon the roof of the main building one hundred 
and fifty feet below the balcony of the tower. But 
the photographic apparatus had become detached and 
because of its lighter weight was blown farther away 
than the telescope. It was lost and unheard of until it 
turned up in the possession of Goosey, who during the 
last few days has been all agog because of his sudden 
• recrudescence in an important role in art and life.” 

“It is a strange story truly,” said Miss Beverly, 
“and I have been listening to it unquestionably all this 
time. But you have not told me your name.” 

“Pardon me, it was an oversight on my part,” came 


338 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the sauve and conciliating answer. name is 

Cobb — Rudolph Cobb — and here is my card. I am 
an editorial writer on the staff of The Still Small 
Voice.’’ 

“Oh, The Voice — the paper owned by Mr. Lodge?” 

“Yes. Do you know him?” 

“I know of him — a great deal, and nothing but 
good. He is a remarkable, noble, wonderful young 
man.” 

“The noblest in all the world,” declared' Mr. Cobb, 
quite fervently. 

“If my memory is not at. fault you are the same 
Mr. Cobb who was a university professor.” 

“That was once my occupation. Miss Beverly.” 

“An expert political economist and sociologist — oh, 
how I love the problems and work of sociology,” ex- 
claimed Miss Sophonisba, gushingly. “But just now, 
dear professor, I must ask you a practical question of 
present and pressing interest. Where is this Mr. 
Goosey whom I came to see?” 

“I came myself to see him by appointment and 
was surprised to find him missing. He sent one of his 
peculiar friends, however, who said that Mr. Goosey 
would feel obliged if I would meet you here tonight 
and take some of the edge off the suspense which you 
must feel.” 

“You have double-edged it instead, but that is not 
your fault. Now, professor, let me ask you one more 
question. Who is the young man that owned and 
operated this remarkable camera and lost it in the 
storm ?” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


339 


“John Lodge/’ 

“Why, is it possible? I would not have thought 
he could find time for such things.” 

“He finds time for every grand and ennobling 
thought ; and nothing is more productive of such 
thoughts than a great storm of nature’s elements.” 

“Have you power to act for Mr. Goosey in dis- 
posing of these photographic treasures ?” was the sud- 
den query next propounded by Miss Beverly to the 
former professor. 

“No, I have not and I would not have it supposed 
for an instant by anybody, least of all by your gracious 
self, that I could be induced by any argument or con- 
sideration to accept such power,” said the other, trying 
to preserve an air of unruffled dignity. 

“Please pardon me, professor dear, no offense was 
meant — none whatever,” said Miss Beverly, with 
alacrity and feeling. “But, I came here for business — 
the business of purchasing the whole stock of photo- 
graphs now in Mr. Goosey’s possession. May I ask * 
you to oblige me by taking a message to him from 
me.” 

“Most certainly, Miss Beverly, and I shall be de- 
lighted to be of aid to you.” 

“Then please see him personally tonight, tomorrow, 
or at least as soon as possible, and tell him that I 
have accepted the proposition he made in his letter 
to me. In other words, tell him, please, that T will 
buy from him at his own stipulated price of a few 
thousand dollars — nay, ten thousand dollars — all the 
pictures made from that plate on which my brother 


340 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


has been photographed, also the plate itself. I will 
send the money for him any time during the next 
few days, either in your care, or otherwise as I may 
be requested. Then, dear professor, may I not trust 
to you to see that the pictures and plate are sent to 
me personally at my brother’s residence — and sent as 
promptly as possible?” 

‘‘They certainly shall be sent, and I shall tell him to 
let you know at once where and how he wants the 
money paid,” responded the professor. 

“Then I shall say not good-bye but au revoir, pro- 
fessor, and believe me, I am very thankful to you for 
your kindness. I expect to have to go into the 
country for a visit of some days, or perhaps a few 
weeks. But when I get back I should like to see more 
of you, professor, as you are so interesting and I am 
so deeply interested in sociology. When I return, I 
should be pleased to have you call. If I should drop 
you a line, would you call without fail ?” 

“Better not talk about that matter for the present. 
Miss Beverly, as there are antagonisms that seem irre- 
concilable between the employing class, of which the 
head of your family is a shining light, and the wage- 
earning class of which I am one myself.” 

“You astonish me, professor,” retorted Miss Beverly 
with spirit. “There are no irreconcilable classes in 
this country — or at least there should be none.” 

“ThaBs just it. Miss Beverly, there should be none, 
but there are.” 

“Well granting, for argument’s sake, that you are 
correct, is what you say a good reason why you should 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


341 


be irreconcilable against meeting such as me in a 
purely social way?” 

'‘Well, I shall think about that. If you will let me 
know of your return I shall let you know my state of 
mind.” 

“That’s so nice of you, professor. Don’t forget. 
You know I am so interested in — in sociology and — 
and your fascinating conversation.” 

The professor bowed low and suavily, but uttered 
not a syllable of speech. Perhaps he was dumbfounded ; 
perhaps impressed mightily. 

“Now, I must be going; you will come to see me, I 
know. Au revoir, au revoir.” \ 

Such were Miss Beverly’s parting words. The next 
moment she was whirled away in her gorgeous car- 
riage. 

Professor Cobb, staring after the equipage, lapsed 
into poetry, quoting the following lines : 

Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose, 

That youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close; 

The nightingale that in the branches sang, 

Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows? 

« 

Before Miss Beverly’s carriage had yet disappeared 
around the corner, or the professor had ceased his 
musings. Goosey appeared upon the scene. Instantly 
he was tugging somewhat fiercely at the coat-tail of 
the lanky professor, who was lost in reverie and gaz- 
ing into vacancy in the direction where the carriage 
bearing Miss Beverly had become lost to the view. 

“You did well, professor; I have been here beside 
the fence for some time.” 


342 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

Without executing any semblance of a volte face the 
professor said : 

‘‘Oh, you have been listening, have you ? Then why 
in thunder didn’t you step forward and arrange your 
dubious business affair with the good lady. You got 
me into a nice mess, didn’t you? But, you may rest 
assured that she knows I am in no way concerned in 
your pretty scheme to get hold of money you have 
not earned — a scheme which is little better than down- 
right blackmail.” 

All the latent fierceness of Goosey’s fighting temper 
was aroused as he said : 

“Blackmail, how can you dare to say so, sir? ’Tis 
nothing of the kind. It will be worth a lot of money 
to the family of her gay old cuss of a brother to get 
hold of the photographs and secure their sure de- 
struction. Besides, whether blackmail or no black- 
mail, it is not nearly as bad a trick as holding up old 
Beverly, like yourself and Randall and Warren did 
last night, to plunder him of the original of the pic- 
tured locket — an act of loot that was plotted by Ran- 
dall and Warren for the purpose of real blackmail; 
or failing that, for use as evidence in the forthcoming 
sensational suit off Julian Carrington, otherwise Julian 
Bartlett, against the estate of his uncle, the elder 
Beverly.” 

“What authority have you for all those glib state- 
ments?” demanded the former professor, who was not 
in the least nonplused by the tirade from Goosey. 

“Oh, well, I was not born yesterday ; I can pump 
Randall’s friends and cronies just as well as he can 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 343 

pump and has pumped mine/^ replied the former car- 
toonist. “Now, if you want to know my authority 
for what I have just said, I will tell you. A young 
woman who has been aiding the secret meetings of 
Randall and the wife of this man Bartlett has told it 
around town in many haunts that the said Bartlett is 
the long-lost heir to a big slice of the Beverly estate, 
and that by chance the young adventuress who married 
him discovered his identity and heirship some time 
before the marriage, and even before Bartlett himself 
knew it. Furthermore, it is asserted that Mrs. Bart- 
lett is now telling the story of the mishap of Beverly 
and the filching from him of a locket which contains 
a picture that is the last link in the chain of evidence 
proving her husband’s claim.” 

“Oh, tut, tut, the holdup,” said Prfessor Cobb, *Vas 
a lark — a practical joke resorted to in order to give old 
Beverly a socialistic union-labor lecture that might 
cause him to cease oppressing with his pauper payrolls 
the thousands of wage-earners in his employment. If 
the locket then disappeared it was taken because the 
ends of justice required that the evidence of the claim 
of Beverly’s dead sister be re-possessed by her son so 
that her selfish brother can be compelled to disgorge 
the estate he has stolen.” 

“Old Beverly is a scoundrel, I know, and any fate 
is good enough for him.” 

“Then you don’t blame the men who may have 

' taken the locket from him ?” 

“No, not a bit,” said Goosey. “It was the pauper 
wages that he paid that first drove me to drink. 


344 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


But it is hardly right to describe as blackmail my 
plan to sell to his sister, or his family, those photo- 
graphs from the plate that shows him in the act of 
kissing the young woman who is now the wife of his 
nephew. A lucky chance put the plate in my posses- 
sion, and in the circumstances there is nothing wrong 
in selling it, or its crop, if the purchaser or purchasers 
think it worth while to pay the price. 

‘‘Well, after all, I can not say that I blame you 
very much, if at all,’’ said Mr. Cobb. “So let us 
bury the hatchet in reference to the affair. And now, 
let us step into your catacomb once more, as I want 
to take a last look at those interesting photographs of 
that wonderful mirage-picture of the automobile 
among the clouds in the empyrean. Then I shall tell 
you, friend Goosey, what Miss Beverly directed me to 
say to you in reference to the delivery of the photo- 
graphs into her hands and the payment of the $10,000 
' which she said she is willing to give you for them, if 
you only will let her have the whole collection without 
delay.” 

“Thunder and fury, will she give $10,000,” screamed 
the tramp in the very ecstacy of delight and glee. 
“Hurrah for Aunt Sophonisba ! Hurrah for her ten 
thousand ! Hurrah for good booze ! Hurrah and hur- 
rah for Goosey — his ship has come in at last.” 


THE SWORD OE THE ADVERTISER. 


345 


CHAPTER LIV. 

All that stood in the way of an early marriage in 
the Beverly family was the poor health of the prospec- 
tive bride’s father. Although the ideals of quiet ele- 
gance entertained by Dr. Barrett did not permit him 
to make a lavish display of devotion at his fiancee’s 
shrine, she lacked none of the attentions due from a 
gentleman to the lady of his plighted troth. It seemed 
a love match pure and simple, and Leandra and the 
physician were happy. She was infinitely proud of 
the love of her magnificent swain; he also was proud 
of her as he knew that at heart she was a true and 
good and cheerful girl, who was certain to be a sweet 
and most womanly woman and a pleasant companion. 

They were in the great library of the Beverly 
mansion one evening talking over the plans for their 
wedding and the other affairs that interest a be- 
throthed couple. Leandra looked beautiful in a gown 
of spotless white and the doctor was unusually elegant 
and graceful in a dressy garb of finest dark broadcloth. 
In her corsage and hair Leandra was wearing floral 
favors — roses red and roses yellow — sent to her by 
order of the man to whom she had pledged her heart 
and hand. 

They have been reading together, reciting poetry, 
and Leandra has been strumming a guitar. She is 


346 the sword of the advertiser. 

seated on a divan which is overspread with Burmese 
rugs against whose rich colors her mixed olive and 
peach-bloom complexion was shown off to stately 
advantage. 

For some time the conversation of the doctor had 
been drifting toward the anecdotal and reminiscent. 
Suddenly he spoke of John Lodge, pronouncing a 
glowing eulogy as to a personality that he called 
beautiful in the extreme, and as to the enterprises 
which were described here and now by the panegyrist 
as uniquely and quite daringly planned by Mr. Lodge 
for the lasting benefit of humanity. 

^‘Do you know, Leandra dear, that Mr. Lodge is 
going on a long trip to South America and Europe?” 
said the physician. 

^'No, I have not heard it before,” said Leandra, 
her look of heightened animation showing her interest 
in the fortunes of the young man whom she had come 
to look upon as her affianced husband’s dearest friend. 

*‘Yes, he is to start in a few weeks,” declared the 
doctor. am very sorry he is going.” 

“But, surely, he will not leave before our mar- 
riage ?” 

“That depends upon how soon we can have the 
ceremony performed.” 

“Why is he going now? Has he not been abroad 
already ? How lonesome you will be without him.” 

“Never lonesome so long as I have you, my dear. 
But really I shall miss him a great deal.” 

As he spoke, the physician’s fine face bore an ab- 


THE SWOEID OF THE ADVERTISER. 347 

stracted, faraway, almost disconsolate look. After a 
momenfs reflection, he resumed as follows: 

'7ust why friend John is going away at this time 
is hard to explain with exactness. As nearly as I can 
make out it is because of his conscientious feeling that 
he ought to visit Brazil without delay, so as to put 
under way his plans for benefiting the working peo- 
ple of the great South American country whence his 
uncle’s vast fortune was derived. He thinks it is his 
duty to make the visit at this time, as his business in 
the newspaper world here is now on a satisfactory 
basis, promising to accomplish great results for the 
wage-workers and toiling masses of our own great 
nation. Everything he has attempted has been phe- 
nomenally successful ; in fact, he succeeded beyond the 
limits of the most sanguine dreams of himself or his 
friends. His plan for procuring and publishing the 
pay rolls of corporations and large firms — showing 
the small and insufficient wages obtained by the em- 
ployes of immense concerns that have amassed for a 
few individuals the fabulous latter-day private for- 
tunes at the public expense — that one move was a 
master stroke against the degrading power of the 
advertiser over the public prints, and has caused him 
to be recognized generally, not only as a genius of the 
business world, but also a great philanthropist and 
patriot. Why, the toiling masses of this country I 
firmly believe are already thinking of him for the 
presidency of the nation, though he is scarcely more 
than a boy in age.” 

“His age should make no difference. If his wisdom 


348 THE SWORD OF THE AD\^ERTISER. 

and his good and noble deeds show his greatness to 
be true and lasting, then the White House is none too 
good for him,” said Leandra, with enthusiasm. 

“He would adorn it — would adorn any station in 
life, no matter how exalted,” said the physician, mus- 
ingly. “But his modesty is as great as his nobility of 
character and mind. Really, between ourselves, my 
dear, I want to say it is my private opinion that one 
of the impelling reasons for the trip he is about to 
take is his scrupulous modesty, and that he is in fact 
running way for the present from the presidency of 
the United States — or at least from the candidacy for 
that great and honorable place in the circle of the 
immortals.” 

“How long will Mr. Lodge be away?” asked 
Leandra. 

“He expects to be gone a year. His schemes of 
beneficence are so far-reaching as to be almost world- 
wide, including all humanity. He says that his trip 
this time is likely to take him farther than South 
America — to Europe and the orient and, perhaps, 
around the world. He expected to lose money at first 
in his newspaper publishing enterprises, and that it 
would be some time before they should pay expenses. 
Instead they have paid expenses and salaries from the 
start, and besides are leaving a handsome surplus to 
be divided on the co-operative plan with his employes. 
He started out to spend for the public good the great 
bulk of his vast fortune. But he avers he now is 
placed in the somewhat paradoxical position that the 
people support his plans so heartily he is not even 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 349 

given a chance to spend the money he intended to 
spend for their benefit.’’ 

^‘He wants to spend, but they will not let him,” 
said Leandra. ^"Well, that is a very fortunate state 
of affairs — to have a great lot of money that one 
cannot get rid of.” 

There was just a tinge of sarcasm in Leandra’s 
voice, but her companion was so enthusiastic in his 
eulogy of John Lodge that the girl’s tone and manner 
as she spoke were lost upon him. 

^‘One time I thought I should be able to persuade 
him to defer for the present his visit to Brazil and 
instead send a personal representative to look over 
the situation there. Besides, I rather shrink from 
the responsibilities that his departure will entail.” 

“What responsibilities? How can it affect you?” 

Quick as a flash the daughter of the great merchant 
had propounded these questions. Her betrothed had 
uttered his last remark half in soliloquy. It was a 
slip that he instantly regretted. But he would not 
shrink from the consequences. He would now tell all. 

“I am glad to know, my dear, that you want me 
to discuss the special phases of Mr. Lodge’s business 
which are of some concern to me,” he said, with de- 
liberation. “Your request for the information relieves 
me of the responsibility of keeping from you the de- 
tails — or at least the general scope — of any individual 
responsibility of mine in regard to which you may 
justly claim that you have the right to be informed.” 

“Ah, dear doctor, how interesting this is getting,” 
said Leandra, with a silvery little laugh. 


350 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

“Well, then, let me tell all that is to be told.” 

“Proceed, dear. What is it ?” 

“Simply that Mr. Lodge has made his will.” 

“Well, that’s natural enough, having so much to 
will away and no next of kin or heirs except the pub- 
lic to fight for his possessions, should he die.” 

“But the point is that he has named me as his ex- 
ecutor.” 

“How real nice of him.” 

“But the responsibility, my dear, that’s what we 
were talking about.” 

“Oh, yes, I forgot. You are thoroughly fascinated 
with the medical profession. Still, Mr. Lodge’s health 
appears good ; so why should you worry over business 
cares that may never befall.” 

“I am not worrying, dear. All that troubles me is 
the responsibility of doing, while he is away, what he 
has done so well and successfully in the last six 
months.” 

“Then you are to manage his business in his ab- 
sence ?” 

“Not exactly that, my dear. I merely oversee it in 
a general way.” 

“Ah, I can see how that arrangement spoils any 
plan for an extended trip on our honeymoon. But it 
will be all right, dear, so long as the happiness of 
yourself and your dear friend is not interfered with. 
I shall gladly acquiesce in anything that suits you, my 
dear.” 

“You are a kind, sweet and good little woman, and 
I thank you very much,” said the physician, caress- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 35 1 

ingly. “When the will was made by Mr. Lodge he 
did not foresee — could not have foreseen — our engage- 
ment to wed. All his plans have been made for some 
time. He wanted to change them to suit the arrange- 
ments for our little affair, but L assumed — very 
rightly, I am glad to see — that you would be averse 
to permitting any convenience of ours to stand in the 
way of his glorious plans for the welfare of humanity.^’ 

'‘You were right, dear, entirely right. Now, are 
you not glad you told me all ?” 

"I am.’^ 

"And you will always tell me all that I ought to 
know — never keep a secret from me ?” 

"I promise.” 

"Then let us be as happy as we know how to be. 
Ah, there is father! He is coming slowly down the 
stairs. How changed he is ? And in a few weeks ! So 
worn and thin and pale! So utterly unlike himself! 
I believe he is coming in here. Shall we wait so as 
to greet and cheer him ?” 

"If he is unattended we might wait, dear. Other- 
wise it were perhaps best that he be permitted all pos- 
sible rest and freedom from excitement.” 

"He is attended by James and Louise. Besides, 
Aunt Sophonisba is assisting and guarding him in his 
steps.” 

"Then let us withdraw into the Venetian room. 
There we shall not be near enough to disturb him 
with our conversation. Before I depart I shall pay 
him a brief professional visit.” 

"Oh, I am so glad to see that he is able to come 


352 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

down stairs again. Is it not about a week since he 
has been out of his room before?” 

Leandra was the speaker. Her thoughts had re- 
verted to the subject of her dreadful interview with 
her father on the morning after the escapade of the 
roadhouse. With the remembrance of that somewhat 
stormy scene still fresh in her mind she now very 
readily acquiesced in the doctor’s plans for what was 
left of the evening. And together they withdrew. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


353 


CHAPTER LV. 

Although his daughter’s description of the great 
merchant’s changed appearance was to some extent 
true, it can nevertheless be seen at a glance, as he en- 
ters, that he is still the same Verrazano Beverly. He 
seemed to totter slightly on unsteady limbs as he 
walked to a seat in the great library just vacated for 
his accommodation, but he resented all offers of assist- 
ance in his movement. Curtly, almost rudely, he dis- 
missed the servants. Then with his face set steadily 
toward the wall and his back toward Miss Sophonisba, 
the only person left in the room, he said, quite dryly 
but not harshly: 

“Well, sister, I am now very ready to listen to any- 
thing and everything you may wish to say to me.” 

A long pause ensued. His sister had taken a seat 
at some distance from him. Though she spoke not a 
word, she was plainly very agitated, and the rustle of 
her silken house-gown must have told her brother the 
story of her presence to aid and counsel him at this 
critical moment in the family fortunes. 

“Well, sister, speak your mind ; I want your ad- 
vice; it has always been good; I wish it — need it — 
now more than ever.” 

“Brother dear, you have often asked for it, always 
heard it, but seldom have you followed my advice.” 


354 the sword of the advertiser. 

“That’s very true, no doubt, and now I only wish 
I had followed it more frequently. But what do you 
advise at this time ! It is a bad state of affairs — very 
bad. I feel that this young man, Bartlett, is Christ- 
ine’s son and as he seems to have fallen in with bad ad- 
visers he is likely to start proceedings that will make 
trouble for me at once. I am now convinced that it 
was in his interest, if not actually by him or his pals, 
that the plot to hold me up and obtain the locket was 

concocted and executed.” 

# 

“Unhappily that is too true, Vero,” said Miss 
Sophonisba. 

“Too true, eh? How do you know it’s true at all? 
Do you realize the full meaning of your words?” 

“Perfectly, Vero, perfectly. I have not had time 
to tell you that I saw that man Goosey again — saw 
him this very day — and that I found he possesses in- 
formation which clears up a lot of things that here- 
tofore have been mysterious.” 

“Indeed! And what could he possibly have told 
about the affairs of our family? How could he have 
known anything worth telling? I believe the fellow 
is the worst sort of a blackmailer. He should have 
been turned over to the police, not given money or 
otherwise humored.” 

“He is a good deal of a scamp, I admit,” said 
Sophonisba, “but, brother dear, he holds you respon- 
sible for his downfall and that is why he avows he 
has no scruples in extorting some money from the 
Beverly family.” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 355 

“Holds me responsible for his downfall? Well, the 
scoundrel has admirable nerved^ 

“He possesses a quaint philosophy with which he 
attempts to justify his claim.’ ^ 

“Well, let us hear how he does it.” 

“He claims,” she said, “that the small wages you 
paid him years ago as an advertising illustrator for 
your firm were so insufficient and oppressive that he 
became discouraged and in the flowing bowl sought 
surcease of his unhappiness.” 

“Nice excuse for a worthless fellow who could not 
live within his income/’ said Mr. Beverly. 

“His poor mother was dependent upon him, and his 
income as an expert artist in your employment was 
only $9 a week.” 

“Well, he could live upon it and support his mother, 
too, if he only wanted to; but the fellow was thrift- 
less and a spendthrift, I suppose. Besides, it may be 
assumed that he got the full market value of his serv- 
ices. Else why did he not try to get other and more 
lucrative employment instead of betaking himself to 
the dramshop and the barrel-house?” 

“Perhaps he did try a hundred times and in his 
short life may have worked for a hundred other em- 
ployers — but that is no answer, Vero, that is no proper 
answer. ‘The laborer is worthy of his hire.’ And his 
hire should be a Just and reasonable hire, enough for 
him to live on and at the same time support a reason- 
able number of helpless, worthy people who may be 
dependent on him.” 

“No matter whether the firm or person paying the 


i 


35 ^ 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


hire is making money, or only making ends meet — 
the employees should be paid good wages, handsome 
salaries? Is that your idea of business life?” 

“Exactly.’* 

“Then, sister, it’s a good thing for yourself that 
you are not engaged in trade or commerce.” And 
Verrazano Beverly laughed softly — the first laugh he 
had indulged in for many weeks. 

“It will do you good to laugh, dear brother, you 
need it,” said his sister, flushing slightly. “But there 
is another side to the question. When a firm is en- 
gaged in a large business it should pay living wages, 
regardless of whether any money is or is not being 
made in the business. Proprietors of such establish- 
ments get a living — and generally a very good living — 
out of the business. Employees also should get a fair 
living out of such a concern. It is wrong to oppress 
and grind them in order to show big profits or any 
profits at all for the employers. If employers cannot 
or will not conduct their lines of business without op- 
pressing their employees, they should withdraw vol- 
untarily from business, or be compelled to withdraw.” 

“Socialism — rabid, destructive socialism is what you 
are talking. Why, sister, you astonish me.” 

“What I am talking is the truth, no matter by what 
name you choose to call it. Besides, I am not con- 
cerned with names but with facts. You know what I 
have said is right and just — every word of it.” 

“But what would become of the law of Supply and 
Demand in labor and in trade?” 

“When the demand is just and the supply obtained 


THK SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 357 

honorably the law that you speak of will take care of 
itself. Alas, and alas, oh law of Supply and Demand 
what a multitude of sins — oppressions, hardships, out- 
rages — have been committed in thy name !’’ 

‘‘Upon my word, you amaze me, but I cannot say 
you are altogether wrong. You appear to have solved 
in a woman’s instinctive way what all intelligent busi- 
ness men find out sooner or later — generally later — 
that the only agency capable of protecting labor from 
oppression is a healthy public sentiment backed by the 
laws and executive machinery of the state. Still, there 
is this difficulty — that every advance in wages, whether 
brought about by strikes or otherwise, is met by the 
employers with a counter advance in the prices of the 
mercantile commodities that are necessities of life for 
the wage-earners. It is the old familiar story of the 
billionaire making a donation of $1,000,000 to a pub- 
lic institution and raising the price of a monopolized 
article at the same time. The wage-earner is bound 
to have the last cent exacted from him in one way, 
or another. His condition is no better if the standard 
of his wages is high or low.” 

“Again I would say,” declared his sister, “that the 
answer to all that — and it is a sufficient and fair ans- 
wer — is that the laborer is worthy of his hire — a just 
hire, a hire that will give him under all conditions of 
business changes enough to live upon and to save at, 
the same time a mite for old age or a rainy day. 
That the laborer is not now obtaining a just wage or 
hire is the greatest economic fact of the industrial 
system of today. He will obtain it some time and in 


358 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

the near future. But just how his emancipation will 
occur is the greatest problem of the coming time. 
The money lost through failures in business is insig- 
nificant in comparison with the money that is amassed 
in fortunes by employers. Reasoning on the same 
principle one would think that the majority of wage- 
earners should be able to amass comfortable fortunes, 
or at least a competence in a life-time. But the re- 
verse is the truth. Thus the natural law inculcating 
the greatest good of the greatest number is a success 
in the mercantile branch of the civilization of our day, 
but a dismal failure in the wage-earning branch of 
that same civilization. That is one of the self-evident 
truths of the age, and no sophistry of the so-called 
science of political economy can hide it.” 

It was clear that Verrazano Beverly felt himself 
under fire and he was nervous to a degree. But he 
controlled himself and attempted a diplomatic -change 
of the topic of conversation. 

^'Sister dear, I have always admired your fine qual- 
ities of head and heart,” he said, somewhat plaint- 
ively. ‘Tt is not new for me to appreciate you in that 
way. But let me ask, if you please, what possible 
bearing all this economic philosophy of yours, can 
have on the story which this man Goosey had to tell 
in reference to some secrets of our family?” 

‘‘Quite an important bearing, brother dear. For if 
you had been less extravagant in your personal habits 
and had paid to all your employees more just and rea- 
sonable wages, rather than have given all increases to 
incompetent pampered favorites, your business af- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 359 

fairs might now be in better shape and you certainly 
could face difficulties with a better conscience and 
without causing so much anxiety to your friends and 
family.” 

“Well, that may be all true enough. But please 
tell me at once what this fellow, Goosey, had to say 
today.” 

“Certainly I shall tell you. From him I learned, my 
dear Vero, that it has been known for some time by 
young men about town that Mr. Bartlett claims to be 
our nephew and that he needed only one link in the 
chain of evidence before commencing- suit for his 
share of the undivided estate possessed by you.” 

“I have known all that for some weeks. Was that 
all Mr. Goosey had to tell?” 

“No, there is more. He said the last link in the 
chain of evidence has lately been discovered.” 

“Aha, discovered by the enterprise of holdup men ?” 

“I suppose so, though he did not say exactly that. 
But what he did say was that this last link, so long 
missing, was a group of photographs in a locket that 
you had worn for many years. Forthwith he glibly 
recounted the names and ages of the persons in the 
picture group, as follows: ‘Verrazano Beverly, age 
about 26; his sister, Mrs. Christine Carrington; her 
son. Master Julian Carrington, age about 7; that dear 
friend of the Beverly family, Mrs. Myrtle Justine 
Dillingham and lastly, the infant daughter of Mrs. 
Dillingham.’ ” 

For a moment Verrazano Beverly was silent, de- 


30O THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

jected, crestfallen utterly. But he flared up again 
with the old fire. 

^‘I want to say once more that I think the fellow 
ought to be handed over to the police,” he said, in 
quick, emphatic accents. ''Undoubtedly he is one of 
the holdup men, or at least their confidant in one way 
or another. Why should I not send a message to the 
police and put them on the track of this fellow and 
the whole scoundrelly gang?” 

"It would be folly, madness, to do anything of the 
sort. He is our friend. Besides, he is a perfectly 
innocent party, so far as the holdup and the robbery 
are concerned.” 

There was a pause. Then the merchant became a 
questioner in turn. 

"Did you secure possession of the fellow’s so-called 
X-Ray photographs?” he asked. 

"Yes,” she answered. 

"All?” 

"Every one.” 

"Have you destroyed them all?” 

"Nearly all ; but I deemed it best to keep a few.” 

Another pause. Miss Sophonba then asked in 
hushed and tremulous voice: 

"Would you like to see one of the pictures?” 

"Have you one there?” was the quick question that 
came in reply from her brother. 

"Yes, here it is.” 

"No, no ; I will not look at it now — not now.” 

He heaved a sigh so exhaustive it seemed as if his 
heart was breaking. He buried his head in his hands. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 361 

Silent tears of sympathy, sorrow, love and pity 
crept down the pale, wan cheeks of his sister. All 
that she had been most proud of in the world had 
been taken from her in the last few years, or months — 
her ideal of the honorable, noble, brilliant brother she 
thought that she possessed had been overthrown and 
shattered forever. Her admiration for him, and her 
pride in him were now destroyed beyond recall. But 
she still loved him with a true sister’s love, and while 
wishing to reprove him, she pitied him from the bot- 
tom of her tender, womanly heart. 

Without lifting his head her brother now asked in 
a voice lowered almost to a whisper : 

‘'How about Leandra? Has she seen those photo- 
graphs, or heard of them ?” 

“Why, of course she has not,” said Miss Sophon- 
isba, almost sobbing aloud. 

“And you will promise me never to let her see any 
one of them, or know anything of the life-story that 
they typify?” 

“Yes, I promise.” 

“That is to say so far as may be in your power.” 

“So far as may be in my power.” 

After this solemn promise had been given, a long 
silence ensued. Sophonisba would not trust herself 
to speak, lest her brother’s suffering should prove too 
much for his weakened system and prostrate him 
again at a time when he was convalescing favorably. 
It was he who broke the silence. 

“Now, dear sister, I should like,” he said, “to have 
your advice as to what ought to be done toward reach- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


362 

ing some understanding with this young man whom, 
I suppose, we shall have to acknowledge to be our 
nephew, as the proofs of his identity seem complete 
in all details.” 

“It is a difficult thing to advise in such a matter,” 
said Miss Beverly in decisive voice, “but I should say 
from my way of thinking that the right thing to do 
would be to give him his own and let him go his 
wav.” 

“Impossible, utterly impossible, my dear, to do any-* 
thing of the sort without inviting bankruptcy,” her 
brother answered. 

“I know, dear V ero ; you have said that before and 
quite often, but justice ought to be done, if the world 
should end. Besides, to be frank with you, I don’t 
believe any overtures that can be made to him could 
now induce our somewhat wavward and worthless 
nephew to accept anything but his full pound of flesh, 
or to defer the blow one hour longer than the time 
when he can deliver it most effectively. Truly, he 
has good cause for feeling bitter against the head of 
our house, yourself, my own dear brother. His 
mother, poor Christine, who was known to me only 
in my childhood days, was not treated very well, and 
no doubt he will find lots of people here in Chicago who 
are likely to be very ready to tell him that she was 
being dealt with very harshly at the time of the pro- 
posed financial settlement over which she and her 
husband had the quarrel with you when they refused 
to accept your terms. Besides, he probably is being 
urged just now by one whose influence over him is 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 363 

all powerful to spare no pain or humiliation to you 
or yours, but instead to strike mercilessly and fiercely 
at our family pride and to let the blow be quick- 
descending and effective, the vengeance as implacable, 
disgraceful and sensational as possib ” 

Groans and the stifled mutterings bespeaking an 
anguish-tortured soul now came from her brother 
across the table and caused Miss Beverly to cease her 
enumeration of the horrors she believed would ac- 
company the exposure of the skeletons in the family 
closet of the house of Beverly. 

She arose, saying: ''Are you ill, brother dear?’’ 

With a decisive gesture her brother waved her 
away. Then he spoke in a voice quivering with emo- 
tion : 

"You have always been my confident and chief 
comforter,” he said, "but that search imposed on you 
by your dying friend, Mrs. Dillingham, kept you 
away from home so much, it was impossible for me 
to consult you as often as I should have liked. On 
her death-bed you promised your sorrowing friend 
that you would mever abandon the quest for her in- 
fant daughter, believed to have been kidnapped by the 
Indian relatives of the missing child’s dead father.” 

"Yes, that child is one of the two lost ones for 
whom I have been searching, and for her 1 will still 
keep up the search.” 

"Will keep up the search? You know that the 
search is ended.” 

"Yes, I believe that it is — or, at least that it is prac- 
tically certain it soon will be ended.” 


THE vSVVORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 



“Both the lost ones are found,” murmured the mer- 
chant abstractedly, as if in soliloquy, “and in what a 
horrifying way they have come back into our lives.” 

True, it may be horrifying, now thought Sophonisba 
to herself, but if whispered rumor was correct her 
brother would not have contemplated with so much 
horror the revelation a few months ago of the identity 
of one of the lost twain. But Sophonisba could be dis- 
creet and tenderly considerate on occasion. So she re- 
mained silent now. 

“When the heiress learns her identity,” said the mer- 
chant, “she, too — as well as the heir — will set about 
obtaining her own — the $300,000 left to you in trust 
for her by her dying mother.” 

“She can not claim it too soon to suit me,” responded 
Sophonisba. “It is ready for her — every penny of it. 
In that matter it has been exemplified that a woman’s 
management is better than some men’s. At least that 
one trust fund has not been misappropriated, squan- 
dered, or applied to the personal uses of the trustee.” 

“It is true you have been capable, as well as luck3\ 
in 3^our business affairs, my sister dear. Still, it 
would be good business for you to deduct from this 
trust fund the legitimate expenses of your years of 
travel in the search for the heiress.” ^ ' 

“Nothing of the trust fund would then be left,” said 
]\Iiss Beverly. “But you must know I never would 
hold back a penny on such an excuse. No, the girl 
shall have every dollar that is due to her, even though 
her life-story be as black as if she were a — a daughter 
of Erebus.” 


the;- sword of the advertiser. 365 

“That is fine sentiment, but it is not business.” 

“No, perhaps not the kind of business in whose 
name are committed some of the blackest sins of the 
calendar. But it is justice, not business, that will de- 
side my course.” 

After a moment’s reflection this noble-hearted wo- 
man again addressed her brother, saying: 

“I have been thinking, dear Vero, that if my little 
fortune of $2,000,000 could rescue you from your 
financial difficulties I might place the whole amount 
at your disposal, on certain conditions.” 

“What are the conditions?” asked her brother, his 
amazement at her extraordinarily generous but char- 
acteristic proposal causing him to look up for the first 
time since his head sank upon his hands at the outset 
of the conversation. 

“That you lead a good life in the future and quit 
forever your reckless, scandalous and evil ways of the 
past.” 

These quick and burning words of his sister, 
coupled with her affectionate and appealing look, 
caused the great merchant, now hovering on the brink 
of financial ruin and disaster, to hang his head once 
more, in shame and remorseful agony. 

Slowly, as if with deep deliberation, he answered; 

“Your generosity and affectionate kindness I always 
appreciate, and now more than ever. But it would do 
no good to take your money, so generously and nobly 
offered. It could not be possible to apply any of your 
fortune, except the income from it, to the staving off 
of the evil day for the firm of Beverly & Co. The truth 


366 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

is tliat the concern is doing .a tremendous business and 
it has assets of nearly $60,000,000, if only the time to 
turn the said assets into cash at something near the 
full value could be obtained. But the trouble is that 
the business has become top-heavy, and is suffering 
from the malignant form of expansion known in trade 
as over-buying of unsalable products. It is a condi- 
tion for which I have to blame only myself — my lack 
of attention to business during the last few years. We 
owe only about $3,000,000 and no doubt could pull 
through the crisis in ordinary circumstances. But 
when this long-lost nephew comes along so inoppor- 
tunely, claiming his $7,000,000 in cash, and will not 
accept an interest in the business — or any other propo- 
sition except the hard cash — then, I confess there is no 
outlook but to go to the wall — to liquidate at a runious 
sacrifice in the court of bankruptcy.” 

*The court of bankruptcy let it be, then, and while I 
have a dollar you will not want for anyth — ” 

‘‘Ah, poor Leandra, my dear, sweet child,” the mer- 
chant continued, not seeming to hear his sister’s kind 
words of encouragement at this time. 

“And to think,” he added, “that because of my 
reckless improvidence and personal extravagance I 
had to allow the payments to lapse on the $1,000,000 
life insurance policy I had taken out absolutely for her 
benefit, as a protection for her against just such a busi- 
ness cataclysm as now seems awaiting me.” 

“Be of good cheer, my brother dear,” said Sophon- 
isba. “Don’t worry over business matters any more. 
Leandra’s future is sure to be almost as free from pov- 


THE’ SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 367 

crty as her past. As the wife of Dr. Barrett she will 
want for nothing that the heart can desire, the doctor 
being one of the noblest and best of men, and also 
independently rich. Then, there is this $2,000,000 of 
mine, invested in gilt-edged properties. Be assured 
that neither yourself nor Leandra shall ever want for 
anything so long as I, your sister, possess a dollar in 
the world.’’ 

''Oh, how good and kind and noble and true you 
always are, dear Sophonisba. And why is it, how is it 
you can be so kind to me ?” 

"Brother, do you really want me to answer that 
question?” said Miss Beverly, her eyes ablaze with 
the aroused spirit of determination to speak the truth 
— if the declaration of the truth, burning deep into her 
heart, were really desired at this time by the brother 
whom she loves so well. 

"Yes, answer me if you can,” said the merchant in 
tremulous voice. 

She answered. What she said was this : 

"Well, then, my dear Vero, the reason simply is that 
I have felt for a long time that because of your bad 
life I should endeavor to do everything possible for 
your comfort and peace and happiness in this world, 
as I fear for your lack of comfort, peace and happi- 
ness in whatever state of existence may be the lot of 
human souls in the world beyond the grave.” 

If a bombshell had exploded in his presence the 
great merchant of Chicago could not have been more 
amazed than he now was by this frank avowal on the 
part of his nearest blood-relative, the sister who loved 


368 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER, 

him and had been so proud of him in the prime of his 
business career. 

That he was startled in an extraordinary degree 
might be considered proven by the fact that he almost 
jumped in his feeble, decrepit way — out of his chair. 
Or. perhaps, it could be more correctly said that the 
shock of the dreadful avowal from one of the two 
best beloved of his kindred so affected him that for 
an instant he was about to collapse and nearly fell 
flat upon the floor. Still, he did not wholly lose his 
self-possession though he spoke not any more. 

For some minutes his grieving sister stood there in 
the palatial room beside him, whispering softly to 
him many soothing words of encouragement, comfort, 
hope and cheer. Unconsciously she held in her right 
hand one of the wonderful Roentgen-ray photographs 
of her brother and a fair companion in the automobile, 
as shown by the electric display of the storm in the 
mirage amid the clouds. The hand in which was the 
photograph she laid on the table, while with her other 
hand she caressed the sufferer’s bowed head and 
gently patted his hands and shoulders. 

With a quiet but firm and determined grasp he now 
possessed himself of the mirage-picture which evi- 
dently he had observed in his sister’s hand and whose 
identity he must have divined or recognized. Then 
he gave a gentle but impressive signal for his sister 
to leave the room. She withdrew, though not with- 
out misgivings. Her first impulse after she left 
was to seek out the doctor, who, she knew was 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 369 

somewhere in the vast reception rooms with Leandra. 
She found them, but deemed it best not to permit them 
to visit the master of the household until he had been 
left alone sufficiently long to give him time to satisfy 
his evident desire or curiosity to have opportunity 
for secret examination of the wonderful mirage-picture 
in which he had such an intimate personal interest. 

Before the sister, the daughter or the physician had 
yet decided to revisit the library an attendant found 
the prostrate form of the master in the luxurious 
Morris chair in which he had been seated all the even- 
ing. He was dead. His expression was not peace- 
ful ; his end had not been calm. And clasped firmly 
between the palms of his lifeless but still warm hands 
was the mirage-photograph of himself and the beauti- 
ful young woman from the country. He had literally 
died staring straight at the picture — admiring it, per- 
haps ; or, it may be, so excited by what he saw that 
the shock of the revelation in the pictured story caused 
his taking-off, though much sooner perhaps than was 
expected even for a patient with so weak a heart as 
Dr. Barrett long ago had found his to be. Even in 
death, the merchant’s eyes were looking at the picture 
— fixed upon it with a stare that was cold and ghastly, 
but withal had an accompanying facial expression of 
mingled remorse and terror. 


3/0 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER LVI. 

PART I. 

f 

THE SERMON. 

About this time John Lodge delivered from the pul- 
pit of the Chicago New South Church the following 
remarkable sermon : 

In religion, as in all other things, evolution or progress 
has had a place. That was reasonable, natural and entirely 
to be expected. 

How far evolution in the sense of future progress is pos- 
sible in religion must be regarded as a matter entirely apart 
from the fact of religion’s progress in the past. If the votaries 
of any particular religion are convinced that in their spe- 
cial dogmas of faith they possess the ultimate of religious 
evolution, it is only right and proper that they should be al- 
lowed the full and free practice and profession of that relig- 
ion, so long as its profession or practice, or both, do not 
interfere with those rights of conscience that any govern- 
ment worthy of the name will be likely to guarantee to its 
supporters henceforward to the end of time. 

No thought has ever been more potent in the world’s his- 
tory than religious thought, and nothing can possibly be more 
beautiful than the idea of a perfect religion. But a perfect 
religion implies a perfect ideal and the possibility of a per- 
fect ideal is at best but dubious. Besides, ideals are obviously 
subject to the evolutionary changes. ‘So the claim of per- 
fection in religion means that those who make the claim are 


THE SWORD OF -THE ADVERTISER. 


371 


cither very vain or very improgressive, especially as in the 
last analysis, it is ideals, not things, that are worshipped. 
In other words, it is my own idea of God — or God, according 
to my own idea of him — that I worship. That is just as 
it should be. It is in full accord with the sacred rights 
of conscience. And conscience is a mighty thing. It is or 
should be the force that rules the world. Conscience is each 
person’s idea of the right. It may even be called the indi- 
vidual idea of God in each human breast. It is this idea of 
God — and not any definite form or shape of the Power it 
represents — which the individual souls have worshipped from 
immemorial time. All religions are but manifestations of 
this idea of God. Religions simply are ideals, and like all 
other ideals they have their grade of merit. They should be 
judged by the practical standard of the good they accomplish 
for humanity, and judged by that standard Christianity o’er- 
tops them all. 

Yea, Christianity is the highest, grandest, most majestic 
mountain peak among the chain of religious creations that 
the surging, volcanic forces of human thought and progress 
have forced aloft into the range of man’s vision against the 
varying outlines of his intellectual horizon. But like the 
traditional story of the big schoolboy, it can be said of the 
big mountain, Christianity, that it has been too prone to 
scorn the pretensions of the smaller boys — the religions 
whose stature seems insignificant or diminutive in the range 
of holy mountains. But in the sight of the Supreme Ruler 
of the earth and Heaven it is entirely probable That all the 
peaks in the sacred mountains look pretty much alike, 
and that the fact of the relative differences in size is not a 
matter of vital importance, since the religion typified in 
each mountain peak has its own peculiar excellence, is suited 
to the social topography of its location and confers its own 
peculiar benefits on mankind. 

“Woe betide the people that have no worship,” said Emer- 
son. Happily there is no such people. Among the citizens 


372 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

of some nations attendance at public worship has been de- 
clining, but instead of the formal worship that is dispensed 
with by the non-churchgoer, an informal but none the less 
sincere, honorable and sacred worship of individual ideals 
goes on apace. This informal worship takes place in the 
minds and hearts of the non-attendants at public worship. 
It is a worship of ideals instead of a definite personality. 
And who shall say that it is not as pious and meritorious an 
act as formal public worship? Once it used to be the fashion 
for theologians to exclaim : “Oh, nobody can worship an 
abstraction, an idea.” But that notion is exploded. It has 
not- stood the test of common sense and every day experience. 
Nothing is now more common than for well-meaning people 
to tell you that they love and worship the good and true and 
beautiful under whatever forms found — and the good, the 
true, the beautiful are abstractions, every one. Such wor- 
ship is addressed to the individual worshipper’s idea of the 
good, true or beautiful, and worship of such ideals is really 
and truly the equivalent of worshipping the true and living 
God. 

Since the problems of religion deal with human affairs it 
may not be amiss for me to say a few words on present day 
topics of sociology and industrialism. 

The most important fact of the time is that wage-earners 
are not given a just share of the wealth they create. The 
inevitable sequel to- this so-called “economic fact” is that 
the greatest and most pressing problem of the time — perhaps 
of all time — is the modern question of how to get for wage- 
earners their just and fair share of the benefits from the 
wealth they produce. So inconsiderable is the number of 
business failures or bankruptcies as compared with the im- 
mense number of business successes and the volume of 
wealth, from labor accruing, it is simply monstrous to have 
such a tremendous amount of under-paid wage-earners in a 
civilized community. Especially is this condition monstrous, 
pitiful and an evil crying to heaven for justice, when we 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


373 


consider the vast private fortunes that are ever being accu- 
mulated in this boasted country at the expense of the major- 
ity of its people. It is a pity and a shame to have to con- 
fess that favoring laws — which should have been declared 
unconstitutional and inoperative for the very reason that 
they favor a class or classes in the community — must to a 
large extent be held responsible for whatever deplorable or 
ominous conditions are found to exist. To say nothing of 
the notorious trust-breeding tariff laws, I have never yet 
been able to find any satisfactory answer as to why the laws 
and courts of bankruptcy are ever ready to aid a bankrupt 
to a new start in business, while no court or law extends 
any favor or advantage to an unemployed workingman, ex- 
cept the doubtful favor of the poor house. 

Public sentiment is at last being aroused to the flaws in 
the top-heavy and cumbersome economic system that seems 
to have broken down with its own dead weight. And it is 
precisely in the alertness and force of a strong and uncom- 
promising sentiment for enforcement and conservation of 
the right as against might, that the salvation of the future 
must be found. But if there is no liberty-loving, justice- 
enforcing public press in which the public sentiment for the 
right can be voiced and focused, then indeed the situation 
is well nigh desperate. That, I regret to say, is the condition 
even now. Day after day in our time the newspapers regale 
the public with stories about the petty rascalities of ward- 
heelers and cheap politicians, while the big fellows — the big 
store magnates who underpay and oppress labor in practically 
all lines of work, are permitted to escape criticism — permitted 
for a consideration. And that consideration is a “business” 
consideration — a subsidy — the consideration of millions in 
cash paid every day and Sunday for huge advertisements. 
Thus to a man up a tree it looks as if the persistent hue 
and cry about the boodling little politicians is» raised pur- 
posely by the nespapers to distract the attention of the pub- 
lic on reo-herring trails, so as to make more easy the escape 


374 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


of the big culprits, who oppress labor and aid the forces 
of disease and poverty, crime and degeneracy and all ungod- 
liness. 

In the law of eminent domain — which simply means the 
rule of just human needs and right-minded public senti- 
ment — in this law if properly understood and enforced by a 
free people and their servant, the state, every evil of the 
modern industrial and commercial system can and should 
find an adequate remedy. Eminent domain, meaning the 
overmastering right of the people to rule, was originally ap- 
plied not alone to matters involving land titles, but to all 
affairs in which the whole people in democratic countries — 
the state or “crown” in an autocracy — may decide to assert 
the right of all, as against the right of an inidividual, or 
the right of the few. “Pro bono publico” — the public good — 
was the form assumed by this doctrine of eminent domain, 
when not applied to land. This doctrine’s force is seen in 
the criminal codes of all nations in reference to nuisances. 
Anything that threatens to poison the healthy, vitalizing 
blood of the human race is a nuisance. For the same reason 
anything that obstructs and poisons the healthy blood of 
free trade, free commerce and free industry among the 
masses of the people in any one nation, is a nuisance. Judges 
of England, and perhaps the American judges, would so 
hold some centuries ago. Why not today? Because what 
is everybody’s business becomes nobody’s business. Indus-’ 
trial nuisances were not abated, because nobody thought it 
his business to lodge complaint against them and have them 
dispersed and broken up. They now have the people by the 
throats, just as the plague gets by the throat a people which 
might have been unwise enough not to quarantine against it. 
For the failure to have the trusts put in the public pillory at 
the start, we may blame, in a large measure, the mammon- 
loving press. If the press had been the guardian of the 
people’s rights and liberties it would have sounded a clarion- 
note of warning, and the people would have arisen and smote 


TIIR SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


375 


the oppressive trusts hip and thigh. But the press was not 
in any position to do so. It was a trust itself — the first and 
the worst of all the world’s trusts. All the widely-read 
newspapers are combined in an association that tied their 
hands together as well as to. the wealthy advertisers, leaving 
to the journals only enough nominal liberty to afford them 
the power of making a pretense that they continue to repre- 
sent the masses of the people. 

In this spectacle of a newspaper trust the cause of human- 
ity, religion and popular progress has suffered incalculable 
injury. It seems that this trust for awhile threatened to 
accomplish a feat hitherto deemed impossible— the befool- 
ment of all the people all the time. How did it seem possible 
to do this thing? Because each of the trust papers fooled 
some of the people all the time, so that all the press fooled 
all the people all of the time. In the average “prosperous” 
daily paper you may see any day from 7 to 9 pages of adver- 
tising paid for by the merchant or “bourgeois” class, as the 
French proletariat puts it — and about three to five pages of 
“censored news.” When I say “censored” I speak advisedly ; 
for I know of my own knowledge as a former employe of 
a “great daily” newspaper that no employe — editor, sub- 
editor or reporter — would dare write or print anything un- 
favorable to any advertiser entered on that sheet’s advertis- 
ing books, and that in many instances when anything was to 
be printed in the news columns about an advertiser the 
particular matter it may have been proposed to print has been 
submitted in advance to the particular advertiser for cen- 
sorship and approval ; and if not approved it is not published. 
Still, the press of our land has the effrontery to pretend 
that it does not represent a class, but “all the people all 
the time !” What an imposition on a tolerant, long-suffering 
public ! 

In the tremendous wave of thought-movement, making 
for the ends of economic reform — economic justice is what 
the socialists and the toiling masses call it in their meetings— 


376 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


a powerful, though almost undreampt of, element of aid and 
good promise is the higher, truer, nobler religious sentiment 
that is gradually taking the place of the older or racial re- 
ligions in all parts of the civilized or quasi-civilized world. 
.This sentiment is theistic, pure and simple, and devoid of 
the formalistic or ceremonial element that alone constitutes 
the apparent difference between any two theistic religions. 
For only ‘‘the fool says in his heart, there is no God.” Dif- 
ferences in moral codes, regarded simply as differences in 
racial custom, will soon cease to shock anybody at all. 
Efforts, more or less successful, may be made among the back- 
ward races and nations to improve the habits and customs 
called the moral code. But there will be absolutely no pre- 
tense or belief that any theistic religion of all the world is 
a false religion. Each believer in a God will then be able 
to say truly in his heart “Every man’s God is my God; my 
God is every man’s God,” and will not need an expensive 
church edifice of stone and mortar to say it in. 

When that time arrives — and it is coming so that this gen- 
eration will see it in all the highly civilized countries of 
the world — who can tell what momentous changes will be 
wrought in human customs. 

Now, I have come to a point where I am going to say a 
few daring things. But the trouble too long has been that 
people have not said sufficiently daring things — have not 
spoken out their real thought upon religion and its allied 
subjects. 

It is rarely that I care to speak of myself in a public way. 
Still I want to tell a litfle story just now. It has to do with 
my boyhood days. 

It happened that my mother, a well-meaning. God-fearing 
woman, was always overcome by terror in a thunderstorm. 
She would seek safety) in flight, her flight being always to 
a darkened bedroom. She would get beneath the bedclothes, 
taking with her myself, then only a few years old. She 
would warn me not to touch my little bare feet to the brass 

r - 


THli: SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


377 


rails or posts of the bedstead lest the lightning would 
strike them and kill me. That is to say, I might be struck 
dead — “God might strike me dead” is the way she put it. 
Well, I did not believe God would do anything of the kind, 
as I had never done him any harm. And I well remember 
how I poked out my little feet and my little toes — cautiously 
S6> that mother would not detect me — and pressed them up 
hard against the bare brass bed-post. And all just to find 
out if God really would strike me dead. 

Perhaps in that same spirit of inquiry in the pursuit of 
justice and truth, still not without reverence, will I make 
known my thought on the present occasion. It is that the 
voice of the newspaper press should be the voice of God. 
It should be the voice of the people — Vox Dei, vox populi. 
But there is another argument — the bold, daring one that I 
have referred to. Here it is. If God wanted to make the 
Bible, the Koran or the Budistic writings — either or all of 
them — the divinely inspired indicator of the roadway to 
heaven he would have felt bound, as a matter of fair- 
play and honor, to set forth his teachings in such clear and 
unambiguous language that the said roadway could easily be 
found and identified by all human beings with an ordinary 
degree of intelligence. Yet it is clear he did not do that 
sort of thing. The religious wars and massacres from his- 
tory’s dawn arc sufficient evidence upon the point. But 
what the Bible and the other books on religion failed to do 
a free, incorruptible and fearless newspaper press may 
accomplish — that is, represent the voice of God on earth. 
What higher mission, grander destiny could any human insti- 
tution aspire to, or the future hold for it. But it is doubt- 
ful if the press will ever fill so glorious a role. It would 
have to drop the patronage of the advertiser. True, the 
Bible was without paid advertisements ; yet it failed to make 
unmistakable the pathway heavenward. What a non-adver- 
tising press could do would be to make plain the pathway 
to the heaven of industrial and economic justice. That 


378 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


would mean the attainment of highest human happiness. 
After the masses of the people had been given the , exact, 
and even justice of the golden rule of trade and prosperity 
m this world, the problem of the future life could be relied 
on to take care of itself. It would be adequately safe- 
guarded by the o’erniastering human instinct asserted by 
Christ when he declared that it is only ‘‘the fool who saith in 
his heart that there is no God.” 

One of the most vital needs of the time is a reconstruction 
of the visions of Heaven. What might, perhaps, be still 
better would be an entirely new vision, as all or most of the 
old-style visions seem to be inadequate to the new thought 
of the progressive times in which we live. 

Now, a word as to visions of a reconstructed religion. It 
would hardly do, I suppose, for a layman to claim any special 
infallibility for any vision, real or imaginary, he may have 
experienced. Yet, I will say that I have had experiences— 
visions, dreams, if you will — which have impressed me 
mightily and whose effects I have never quite shaken off, 
despite a strict sectarian training in my youth and early 
manhood. 

Briefly my visions, if such they may be called, were 
dreams which I have had in sleep — or, perhaps, more cor- 
rectly in a half-wakeful condition. They were dreams, or 
visions of heaven — I am myself inclined to call them visions. 
What I saw, or fancied that I saw, in those moments was 
that heaven is a great spiritual democracy which the majority 
of all mankind — past, present and future — will attain after 
death. With the instinct of a newspaper man, trained to 
look always for the most startling news to be found, I 
made a special quest for the presence of a heretic in heaven. 
It was a successful quest. I found myriads of heretics. I 
even found the agnostics and the atheists there. Nearly all 
were there except wilful murderers, and the oppressors of 
the poor and innocent. Others not found were the degraded 
perpetrators of revolting offenses against the sanctity of 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


• 379 


humanity, which humanity I found to be really made in the 
image and likeness of the Supreme directing power behind 
great nature’s scenes. For the murderers and oppressors a 
special place or condition was provided where deprivation 
of the heavenly joys prevailed from the beginning, and was 
to prevail perhaps forever. For the perpetrators of the 
offenses against the sacredness and purity of humanity a 
place was provided in which they were long deprived of the 
heavenly joys, although! but few or none of these offenses 
was wholly unpardonable. 

To the heavenly state or condition the attribute of morality, 
as we understand it, seemed unknown and unnecessary, as 
no conventionality or custom — and morality means custom — 
had any binding force there. In heaven it was clearly seen 
and recognized that the offenses known here on earth as 
immorality carried with them their own punishment in the 
form of the wages of sin reaped on earth in abundance while 
yet the offenders had a mundane existence. Still, because 
of the importance of morality to the perpetuity of the human 
race, the offenders on this score found themselves con- 
demned to walk the shores of that undiscovered country 
depicted by Shakespeare when he told how the ghost of the 
Elder Hamlet was “doomed for a certain time to walk the 
night.” 

In explanation of the presence of the agnostics and athe- 
ists in heaven, St. Peter, at the gate, said solemnly and with 
splendid charity, that “inasmuch as no sane being ever died 
without some flickering of the spark of hope in mind and 
heart,” it would not be in accord with the mercy of the all- 
wise ruler to bar out the supposed atheists for such a 
reason as their putative atheism. 

Whereupon St. Paul spoke up from his position at Peter’s 
elbow, and what he said was this : 

“Even when the reputed atheists are really and truly 
atheists and actually have no belief or hope as tOf a here- 
' after, still the infinitely merciful Ruler of Earth and Heaven 


380 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


pardons them for their fault of unbelief — just as Christ 
pardoned the unrepentant thief — and forthwith admits them 
to the heavenly fold, even as Christ admitted the doubting 
Thomas, our brother and our friend.” 

In fact, it seemed clear that in the after-life a person is 
not blamed a great deal— and certainly is not eternally pun- 
ished — for any shortcomings of his or her earthly career in 
the matter of the attitude assumed by the human and finite 
mind toward the baffling problems beyond the grave. 

When I asked to be shown an atheist in heaven, the angel 
of the Lord, with smiles and manifest joy, pointed out Vol- 
taire and Paine and Ingersoll. I asked to be shown some 
agnostics, and the glorified figures of Herbert Spencer, Hux- 
ley and Tyndal, with hosts of others, were produced. Deists 
were asked for by me, and I was * brought face to face 
with Victor Hugo, Renan, Confucious, Moses, Budha, 
Zoroaster, Pocahontas, Hiawatha, Shakespeare, Goethe, 
Browning, Poe and even Zola. It was explained to me that 
the Procession of Deists in heaven would be almost endless ; 
and when 'asked why that was so, the angel guide, having 
consulted with St.' Paul, made answer as follows : 

“It is so because Deism is the fundamental — the one pre- 
vailing characteristic — of all the world’s religions from the 
beginning. Though their names and form are very often 
different, all religions look alike In heaven. 

“Votaries of all religions upon the earth have always been 
worshipping the same God, no matter under what name or 
with what crude or charming rites and ceremonies. Every 
man’s God Is the God of each, and the God of each is the 
God of all. 

“That is why the Deists are an endless chain here. In- 
deed, it may truly be said that none here is known by any 
other name than Deist — which is to say, a believer in God. 
Such is the rule and the law, once the elect have obtained 
entrance into the circle of the beatific. And practically all 
the human race are the elect — all who have felt or have re- 


Till': SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 381 

ceived a mother’s love — maternal love being the nearest thing 
of all to the divinity. 

“\our worldy distinctions and classifications into Catholics 
and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, Buddhists and Islamites, 
Atheists and Pantheists are unknown here and regarded as 
meaningless. All here are Deists — believers, now at least, 
in the one supreme directing intelligence. In a word they 
are worshippers of Deus, or Zeus, or Jehovah, or Buddha, or 
Allah, or The Great Spirit, or The Great Silence, or The Un- 
knowable — the one and only God, no matter by what name 
he may have been spoken of among the nations of the 
earth. And there never were false Gods. Even in th^ 
shapes and forms of idols and totem-poles and in the sun, 
moon and stars the worshippers adored simply the supreme 
directing power for which each idol stood.- Yes, all adore, 
and always have adored the same God. 

“This truth as to the oneness of all Gods is the first 
and greatest discovery -made by a newcomer in heaven. 
Here it is quickly perceived that when the veil which screens 
the future from human ken is drawn aside by the hand of 
death, all the Gods of the human tribes represent the same 
Supreme Being. He is God to the Christian, Allah to the 
Mohammedan, Buddha to the Buddhist, the unknowable to 
the agnostic, the Great White Spirit to the American Red 
Indian. He is all Gods in one; the same all-powerful, all- 
wise-being under different names. 

“And though the tribes and nations of men have given him 
imperfect and differing names — as was to be expected in 
view of their diversified languages — still the human attributes 
of rage, jealousy or cruelty are not to be found in him. 
He is as glorious and good as any vision of seer or prophet 
on earth ever depicted Him; and His greatest glory is His 
justice. No earthly standards govern Him. For injusftce 
is impossible among those good enough to enter heaven, and 
God will save all— or practically all — in His own time. 

“Regarding the atheists as insane and irresponsible on at 


382 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


least the one great subject of religion, it is easy to under- 
stand why God is merciful to them. But there is one class 
who, after their passage to the earthly grave, will find — and 
ever have found — His mercy withheld from them for aeons, 
if not for aye. They are the oppressors of the poor and 
lowly; the grinding employers of labor; the hard-hearted 
hypocritical people who fail to pity the human sufferings 
rightly attributed to the withholding of just pay from poor 
families in which at any time are liable to be orphans and 
widows; or the doers of injustice to persons who have been 
maimed, broken down or otherwise injured and made pitiable 
by the hard conditions vmposed at the hands of the industrial 
task-masters of the world today. In reference to these op- 
pressors it can truly be said that neither the tongue nor pen 
can describe, nor the mind of man conceive the punishment 
and torture and castigation prepared for them at the com- 
mand of the Most High. Yea, they shall descend to the 
lowest of the seven depths and there they shall hear the 
wail of the orphan, the sob of the widow, the cry of the 
children shivering in thin rags, and' shall feel as well as 
see the shadowy fingers of shame and sin pointing accusingly 
at them. These fingers shall stamp the very souls of the 
oppressors with the unending terrors and horrors of flame 
and fire.” 

Such were the words of Paul. 

But, ah, how comforting it would have been for your 
modern Dives — your industrial Croesus of this age — if, when 
the curtain is drawn and all within is shadow and mist, and 
the physician takes his last leave of the silent chamber and 
the attendants summon the anxious ones to witness the last 
scene of all, could the sufferer — who has brought nothing 
into the world and can take nothing out of it — could this 
man who has deprived the naked of their clothing and the 
hungry of their food— could he but close his eyes in peace 
and say to the unwelcome visitor Thanatos — twin brother 


the sword of the advertiser. 383 

of Sleep — could he but say : “I meet my doom with the 
consolation that I have injured no man.” 

Such oppressors of the human race are ranked by the 
Lord in the same category with the most fiendish and cruel 
of murderers — the offenders in reference to whose fate the 
great mystery is whether the Ruler of the universe will let 
it be known, in time or eternity, whether they are ever to be 
pardoned at all. In most ways the offense of the industrial 
oppressors is as bad as that of the murderer, and in some 
ways even worse. For the mere physical or financial oppres- 
sion of human beings also means intellectual and moral 
oppression. Degeneracy of the human race is thus ac- 
complished; the wise plan of the Godhead for the highest 
and best results and developments is retarded, checked or 
thwarted. Baseness and cruelty directed and carried out by 
the evil-minded and inhuman oppressors, are thus responsible 
lOr much suffering in the world, and the retribution to be 
exacted from the guilty ones will be the most dreadful pun- 
ishment possible within the confines of space or time. 

It is somewhat of a pity that the slow processes of human 
evolution have retarded for so many ages the general recogni- 
tion of the great truth of the oneness of all Gods, but I 
am glad to be able to say that there is evidence upon the 
earth of an intellectual awakening which will enthrone and 
keep alive there until the end of time the splendid and gen- 
erous doc^-rine of the true fraternity of the Deistic charity 
symbolized so aptly in the Golden Rule as laid down in the 
sermon of Christ upon the mountain. That Golden Rule 
means majority rule — a majority rule having its inspiration 
in the true and abiding spirit of justice and brotherly love. 
“Do unto others as you would wish they might do unto you.” 
was a saying addressed not to one race or person but to all 
persons and all nations. The realization or general ac- 
ceptance of that rule would bring about 

“The parliament of man 
The federation of the world.” 


384 the sword of the advertiser. 

This rule, therefore, this Golden Rule should be the rule 
governing all humanity. It governs in heaven, and it should 
flourish, prevail and triumph upon the earth. It is the rule 
that holds sway in a mother’s heart, enabling her to give 
to her child the unselfish fathomless measure of love that 
she would have her child give unto her in return — a mother’s 
love being now and for aye 

‘The holiest thing on earth, 

Or in high heaven.” 

There would be less wickedness, less neglect of the just 
claims of the poor and of the toiling masses if we would 
only think more frequently of this Golden Rule of love in 
our fond mother’s hearts — which is the symbol and embodi- 
ment of the Golden Rule of love in the hearts of all in 
heaven. 

Part II. 

PROFESSOR COBB’s SERMON. 

Another remarkable sermon was preached in Chi- 
cago at this period. It was delivered in' a labor 
temple before a great audience of wage-earners, the 
preacher being that somber genius, Rudolph Cobb. 
His sermon was as follows : 

Worship of anything or anybody should be unnecessary 
for intelligent beings. It certainly is averse to the natural 
law of the dignity of manhood. It is not likely to survive 
as a force in the world. Though it never should be 
formally abolished by force — and probably never will be — 
still it seems likely that it will die a natural death as the 
standard of intelligence among the masses of the people in- 
creases and becomes more general and widely diffused. 

Worship is demeaning to noble minds. It makes slaves 


THE SWORU OF THE ADVERTISER. 


385 


out of creatures invested with th<^ dignities and glories of 
human existence — slaves as abject as any who ever cringed 
under the whips of rulers’ minions in Egypt or Babylon or 
Rome — or any other industrially enslaved country, whether 
ancient or modern. What is more, I do not hesitate to say 
that all forms of worship must be abhorrent to The Supreme 
Being Himself. It cannot be that he would wish — or ever 
has wished — that independent, noble creatures in the vesture 
of all humanity’s glorious gifts and powers, should demean 
themselves and prostrate their splendid intelligence in the 
dust and grime of lies and deceit by bowing down before — 
what? 

A fetish. 

God could never have wished that the creatures created in 
His own image — as the saying is — should prostrate them- 
seelves in worship or adoration of anything or any idea save 
the good and the noble and the just in human affairs and 
human nature. It is doubtful if it ever could have been 
especially pleasing to him to have the peoples of all this 
world make of him the fetish in adoration and worship that 
the ancient Hebrews most certainly made of Him under the 
name of the capricious and tyranical but purely imaginary 
being they called Jehovah. Such a God could not be other 
than a fetish, no matter how adored and worshipped — or 
under what name and title. 

Religion is wholly a different thing from worship. Religion, 
pure religion, has been well defined by Latimer as not con- 
sisting “in the wearing of a monk’s cowl, but in righteous- 
ness, justice and well doing.” In the new testament religion 
is described as the befriending of the fatherless or the 
afflicted, and keeping oneself unspotted from the world. 

Hope of reward or fear of punishment — or hope and reward 
combined — have no proper place in true religion. It is, 
however, a fact of history that hope and fear played important 
parts in the development of all religions, Christianity in- 
cluded. Perhaps it was just as well that it has been so. 


386 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

That it should be so seems at all events to have been 
inevitable, if we are to view religion in the light of the 
known facts of life and history. Evolution seems to have 
been as inevitable and as necessary in religious systems as 
in the other developments of the higher civilizations. Great 
good has been done and will long continue to be done by 
the existence of worshippers and worship, and of fear and 
hope in the looks askance at heaven. So long as people are 
impelled to leading better lives and feel that through the 
agencies of public worship in churches and upon altars they 
are being uplifted in the scale of humanity, so long will the 
churches continue. Just so long, too, will it be wise for 
governments to encourage, or at least tolerate the systems 
of public worship. If for no other purpose, the church edifices 
and the preachers will probably be found useful in the 
future as agencies for the bringing about of the regeneration 
typified in such excellent work as that of the modern social 
settlements. Still, the fact is that with fairly educated, in- 
telligent people the entire argumentative thesis of public 
worship has not a leg to stand on — if so homely an expression 
may be pardoned in that connection. 

■ When the fathers of our American system of government 
framed the national constitution and the bill of rights they 
showed rare and wise common-sense in the provisions guran- 
teeing freedom of worship to all religions and forbidding 
forever the establishment of a national system of worship 
in this land. A state system of worship— misnamed as a 
state religion — engenders persecutions of those not conform- 
ing to the said “state worship.” And persecutions create in 
turn great hordes of bigots and of martyrs. Combativeness 
and racial feelings are thus aroused, and the persecutions 
and martyrdoms and bigotries go on ad infinitum. If there 
had been no state religions there would have been none of 
the strange and shameful proceedings known in history as 
the “burning of human bodies to save those bodies’ souls.” 
What barbarities ! And these shameful acts were avowedly 


THE SWORD OT” THE ADVERTISER. 


387 


committed in the name of that gentle teacher whom the 
prophet Isaiah is supposed to have referred to as the Savior, 
the Christ, the Messiah, the “just one.” 

The good already done and yet to be done in the world 
by religion — the heart’s religion — is priceless. But the good 
yet to be done by public worship is somewhat dubious, and 
may not be unmixed wtih harm. Public worship would be 
strictly logical only if all the people in any church or statd 
have exactly the same idea — and only one idea — as to what 
, God is like. But this is impossible, as men’s minds will 
always differ. It is good that they do differ. If they did 
not differ, there would be an end of progress and most 
other things. 

Not even about Napoleon, who was much worshipped in 
his time, did all the worshippers agree. To the philosopher 
it would seem, in the last analysis, that Napoleon was wor- 
shipped because of his ability to bring violent death to mil- 
lions of people in grim w'ars, and death by starvation to other 
millions in war’s great devastations. Thus hero-worship is 
akin to religious worship, and it is euually unintelligent. 
Raising up one man for purposes of hero-worship implies 
the self-demeaning of other human things — the millions 
who do the worshipping. It is undemocratic to worship 
heroes. It is un-American. All honest, just, good people 
are heroes or heroines — a statement with which many will 
agree on grounds of experience, as matters are gradually 
coming to such a pass that it seems it soon will take a hero 
to be honest. 

In the matter of worship the Golden Rule probably applies 
to God himself. He would not worship men, and it may be 
supposed that He does not want them to worship Him— 
rather that He wants them to do unto Him as He would 
be willing to do unto them. 

For the human family the greatest of all requirements and 
laws should be the doing of justice. This involves fair 
play for all. It connotes consideration of other people’s 


388 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

i 

rights. It means brotherly love, benevolence, charity. It 
is the apotheosis of the Golden Rule— do unto others as you 
would they do unto you. Can the oppressive industrial 
magnates of our day, can the beneficiaries of commercialism; 
can the money changers, the politicians, the judges, the law- 
yers, the office holders say truly that they observe the Golden 
Rule in their business or professional acts toward the rest 
of mankind? And yet in the great Sermon on the Mount 
Christ says that justice fulfills the law, meaning the natural 
law that should govern the acts of the members of the ' 
human family toward one another. The idea of divinity, 
a directing mind or force, may be assumed to be a per- 
sonification of justice. So the Golden Rule represents the 
Godhead. Justice is itself the Godhead, and the handmaiden 
of justice is charity. 

This brings us to the portals of highest religion — “sweetest 
religion” — which commercialism, that fell destroyer of the 
Golden Rule, has made in our day a real rhapsody of words. 

From time immemorial each of the great religious 
systems of the world has condemned, either openly or by 
implication, all the other systems. By the very fact of 
such condemnation of each religion by all the others, the 
Golden Rule was flagrantly violated on the very threshhold 
of all the churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places 
of public worship throughout the world. This mutual con- 
demnation simply meant that every religion extant since 
the dawn of history was always branded false by some other 
contemporary religion. Still no one religion ever has num- 
bered in its rank a majority of the earth’s population at 
any one time since history or fable had a beginning. What 
absurdity this leads to ! 

It simply means that a majority of the human race will not 
attain happiness in the future life, assuming that there is a 
state of life or being beyond the grave. Now, the only way 
in which our finite minds can judge the merits of the world- 
creation is by results. No other criterion can be applied in 


THE SWOKD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


389 


this analogy. But see what an absurd conclusion this leads 
to. Why, it simply means that a constant majority of the 
human race at every age of history is doomed to unhappiness 
after death. For in no age of history have a majority of the 
world’s population been of the same religious belief or prac- 
tice. In fact the overwhelming majority has always been 
opposed to any one religion. Therefore, if there is only 
one true religion, the overwhelming majority of the people 
of any age are always doomed to unhappiness after death. 

If that were true, then God’s work in creating the world 
is a dismal failure, judging by results — and we know of no 
other way to judge it. That is to say, God commands the 
members of the human family. His creatures, to do unto 
others as they would others should do unto them, but He 
violates the law Himself. In allowing others to go into 
perdition, or a state of unhappiness He certainly does not 
do unto others as He would wish they should do unto Him, 
granting that they might have the ability to do anything to 
Him at all. Would that be fair in Him? Would that be 
Godlike? Unless the majority of all minkind — counting the 
past, the present and the future — are to be saved, the creation 
of the world and its inhabitants was unjust fiable either in 
nature or in a God. Instead of a good act, it was an evil 
act; and doubtless a jury of God’s peers — if He could have 
equals — would so decide. Such are the absurdities to which 
the rival theologic systems brought humanity, nature, and 
even the Almighty Himself! 

From all this it seems reasonable to suppose, that the 
champions of the world’s different religions have never had 
any good reason or justification for their mutual strifes and 
wars and antagonisms. No worshippers at any one shrine 
ever had any good reason to assume that the votaries of 
any religion differing from theirs would be condemned after 
death to a state or condition of unhappiness, much less 
damnation. They had no sufficient reason to suppose in 
regard to the world beyond the grave that the right to life. 


390 


THE SWOKl) f)F TIJE ADVERTISER. 


liberty and the pursuit of happiness would not be a natural 
right, there as well as here. They really had no just cause 
for believing that they knew any more than other persons 
about God, or how it would best please God to be worshipped. 
All that they may rightly be said to know was that their 
reason and instincts told them that there must be a supreme 
power, a directing intelligence behind the shifting scenes of 
this earthly existence. 

It is quite easy to understand what a warping effect has 
been produced on minds and hearts by the idea among 
dominant nations that they were specially ' favored by a 
special God — who, by the way, was always the real true, 
Simon-pure God — the God, who, they invariably claimed, 
was alone worthy to bear the name “Almighty.” The 
corollary of this narrow belief was the selfish, cruel, unhelp- 
ful feeling that since the majority of the ostensible votaries 

✓ 

of the true religions — and all the votaries of all the false 
religions — were in any event doomed to eternal perdition, 
then the only prudent course for the self-nominated illuminati 
aspiring to eternal joy in the circle of the elect was to look 
out for one’s self only, and this in the domain of the 
spiritual, as well as the temporal. A sequel of all this was 
class pride and the rise of aristrocacy, with the attendant 
oppression of the underlings and the treatment of them as 
mere cattle. 

Small wonder that in more modern times the theory of the 
survival of the fittest is often sough*t to be dragged upon the 
industrial stage — but most often by the apologists of history 
in their efforts to palliate the naked facts of murder and op- 
pression inflicted on the weak by the strong and the tyrannous 
— and very often with weapons unfairly obtained. 

With the prevalence and encouragement of the notion that 
the great, all-powerful God had not thought it worth His 
while to arrange matters so that all, or at least a majority 
of human beings would have the just and proper measure of 
fair-play in the- great race to attain happiness and avoid 


THE SWOEID OF THE ADVERTISER. 


391 


punishment after death, the aristocratic idea that nothing 
could or should be done for the masses of the people grew 
apace. Indeed, it was an idea that purposely was fostered 
among those whose forefathers had seized the good things 
of the earth; had proceeded to usurp and did usurp the 
power and emoluments that were easily made to appear as 
inherently pertaining to the property rights assumed. 

They simply possessed themselves of ownership and held 
against all comers the valuable things possessed. And in 
explanation of this state of things the law of the survival 
of the fittest is now very often given as the excuse. But the 
law of the survival of the fittest is a law of inanimate nature. 
And nature is barbarous. Nature is the greatest of all bar- 
barians. Man has been fighting nature’s forces, subduing them 
and bending them to his will from time immemorial. Nor was 
there ever a time when the spark of divine goodness in man — 
his conscience — has really permitted him to believe that 
justice was on the side of his fellow man with the bludgeon — 
the fellow man who was making war upon and exterminat- 
ing, with strong arms and a big stick, the gentle, harmless, 
weaker brethren of the human race and possessing himself 
of rights which they are now often held to have been unfit 
to survive for. 

Germinating in the minds of the present generation are 
thoughts and feelings so just, humane, considerate and alto- 
gether noble that a reconstruction of the economic founda- 
tions of the whole social fabric is as inevitable as Newton’s 
laws. How it is to be brought about no man can say, 
though no doubt the socialists will tell you that their serried 
forces and convincing arguments are destined to accomplish 
the work. Nov/, whatever may be thought of their special 
pretensions, in one respect the socialists must be awarded 
the palm for foresight in properly gauging the extent and 
magnitude of the field in which the reform process of mental 
firmentation is now going on. This is in having made 
their organization international in scope, with definite aims 


39^ THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

of world-wide reform. Still, it may be doubted whether the 
next great reconstruction of society will be on lines that 
shall be recognized as distinctly socialistic. It is more likely 
to be on the line of co-operation or profit-sharing in all 
economic effort — and the profit-sharing idea is by no means 
typically socialistic. 

In the public mind today the idea that the toiling masses 
are not getting a just snare of the profits and rewards of 
their labor is becoming fixed and inerradicable to a degree 
undreampt of by their employers. For years I have mixed 
with the wage-earners ; attended their most representative 
meetings, got their confidence and I hope their esteem, with 
the result that I fully understand how bitter they are at 
having so long been denied the fair share of bread and 
life’s comforts that they feel and say their labor entitle 
them to obtain. That is their conviction everywhere and I 
believe they will soon be feady to make almost any sacrifice 
to bring about a readjustment of the wage-system — the said 
readjustment to take the form of equitable profit-sharing on 
some definite plan yet to be worked out. 

Should anybody attempt to deny the justice of the wage- 
earner’s claim, they will laugh such person to scorn. They 
can point derisively to the millions of unshared profits 
amassed by the magnates of the great industrial enterprises — 
the trusts, the competition-destroying combinations of busi- 
ness concerns. Inasmuch, too, as the socialist dream of a 
law to destroy competition among wage-workers seems unat- 
tainable in the immediate future, the counter demand of 
higher wages of equitable profit-sharing is being heard on 
every hand. It will be heard more and more in the coming 
years. In time it will come to be practically a cry of all 
the toiling human masses -for justice from the entrenched 
wealth and power of the kind typified in the industrial 
trusts of our day and generation. Society, a word or term 
by which I mean the social organism of our day, is much 
like an inverted pyramid. It stands upon its apex, not its 


THR SWOKD OF THE ADVERTISER. 393 

base. It will fall. All the laws of analogy in the natural 
order^ indicate that its fall is inevitable. 

Wealth and worldly station are the keystones of this un- 
natural pyramid. They are cemented by the sweat and blood 
and tears of humanity. 

By a curious paradox, not without parallel in nature, the 
social factors that are pushed the farthest toward the pyra- 
mid’s inverted base are the wronged, the oppressed, the out- 
raged. Literally, the common people are being pushed off 
the earth. 

It does not hurt the forces of wealth and worldly position 
to be the apex at the bottom. Why? Merely because the 
burden that the inverted base of the social pyramid imposes 
on them is the pleasant impost of riches and power. So 
long as the masses, thus held aloof from the good things of 
the earth, shower the big gold nuggets, earned by their 
labor — glory and power instead of brickbats — upon the lucky 
few in the feed trough at the inverted top, why, just so long, 
of course, the present industrial scheme of things will stand. 
In other words the question is, will the toiling masses of 
the people always remain willing to see much of the share 
of wealth that is rightfully theirs as producers, continue to 
be applied for the supplying of needless and vapid luxuries 
for spendthrift and idle rich persons, to whom, if vast in- 
heritances were made impossible the state would owe simply 
the opportunity to make a living and to pursue happ'iness, 
side by side with the penniless and the lowly? 

In our boyhood days we all have played spinning tops, or 
have seen other boys play them. _Well, the spinning top 
is another illustration of the inverted social pyramid. It will 
remain spinning upon its apex just so long as the momentum 
from the unwinding of the cord or string remains with the 
top as a motive force. When the momentum becomes ex- 
hausted the spinning mass, or top, topples over. Without 
the spinning momentum, or motive force of the string, it 
may not. cannot, stay upright upon its prong or apex. Laws 


394 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


of gravitation cause the top to tumble when the spinning , 
momentum gives out. So with the social economic structure 
of our day and generation. It is a structure that most 
certainly would not continue to revolve, but would topple 
over to its fall, if a long, but almost worn-out spinning 
string — a motley fabric of shreds and patches — was not yet 
in use to supply the momentum so vital to the beneficiaries 
of the special privileges known as “vested interests.” 

Now, what is this handy string, this surprising motive ' 
force, by means of which the industrial-economic world of 
today is kept spinning dangerously upon its apex, when 
it ought to be resting steadily and safely upon its base, which 
base is or should be the all-producing people? This peculiar 
force is simply the people’s supine acquiescence in the false 
economic doctrine of supply and demand. Like the nebular 
hypothesis this doctrine that the demand regulates the supply 
was formulated in good faith. Like the said nebular hypothe- 
sis ,the doctrine of supply and demand was exalted to the 
status of natural Uw. It was given the dignity and name 
of natural law, or law of nature, because it was alleged to 
be the explanation of a certain set of economic phenomena 
supposed to be found occurring invariably. Now, nature’s 
laws are ever invariable. But we have seen the trust mag- 
nates vary the law of supply and demand at will. They 
curtail or regulate the supply of the manufactured necessi- 
ties of life. Then they take a rest, sit down and wait for 
the inevitable demand, having first destroyed competition by 
pooling or combining among themselves and then under- 
selling all the unabsorbed factories and stores in any one 
line of business. And yet the false prophets of the false 
schools of so-called economic science are still found making 
a pretense of defending the thesis that the pseudo-law of 
supply and demand is as inevitable and as much a natural 
law as the hypothesis or law of gravitation. But even 
assuming that both these hypotheses may be classed as 
natural laws of a certain sort, it has been 'pi'wed that one is 


THE, SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


395 


a “law” only in a limited sphere and has been no law at all 
unto the trusts. And the scientists admit that it may yet 
be proven that the law of gravitation might some time be 
shown to be true only in a lirhited sphere, and that it may 
even be found working in a reverse order, or a contradictory 
way, in a universe other than this terrestrial one of ours. 
So these “laws” are really no laws at all, only theories that 
are tentative explanations of certain sets of conditions claimed 
to be found in nature. 

Generations of the future will not be frightened by this 
ponderous talk or theory alleging that they are the slaves of 
natural law. Such natural laws as really had enslaved and 
fettered the human race have been subdued and overcome ; 
or by the genius of invention and discovery have been made 
the salves of man. Witness what electricity and the tele- 
graph have done. It is fit and proper that the dumb forces 
of nature — and they alone — should be made the slaves of 
man. 

In nature every advance in evolution has involved the 
destruction of the least fit and the survival of the fittest. 
Modern socialists contend that while the processes of eco- 
nomic evolution will continue to cause destruction in count- 
less ways, even involving great loss of human lives in sweat- 
shops and factories and wars, still the time must come when 
class-conscious intelligence, developed in the masses of hu- 
man beings, will inevitably compel a halt to be called. Then 
the so-called unfit as well as the fit or fittest will survive. 
Let us hope that the change may be brought about in a 
bloodless way. Human intelligence, decreeing and com- 
pelling the doing of even and exact justice in all things, 
both in the industrial and the civic sphere, is bound to ac- 
complish this revolution as the standard of education in- 
creases along class-conscious lines. But whether the revolu- 
tion is bloody or bloodless will depend solely upon the 
aggregate of wisdom, honesty, and resourcefulness in man- 
kind. 


39<J the sword of the advertiser. 

It is an insult to human intelligence to claim— as often 
has been claimed — that the poverty of the masses and the 
wealth of the few are results of natural laws. It is much 
more obvious that they are the results of human laws and 
conventions, the great mass of human laws in the past hav- 
ing been made by and for the individual persons possessing 
and anxious to retain special privileges and immunities that 
were first obtained by force or fraud, or the oppression of 
the masses. 

Any pretense or claim that poverty is a natural law and 
wealth another such law seems to me a mere restatement of 
the scoundrelly “law” of the survival of the fittest. It is close 
akin to that other barbarous and scoundrelly law or doc- 
trine of special or exclusive salvation after death — the dogma 
or law of the survival of the fittest in heaven. It should 
be, and probably is, the law of the Almighty to make His 
heaven fit all people after death instead of expecting them, 
poor helpless worms of the earth, to have fitted themselves 
exactly to the dimensions of His heaven. Unless there are 
some in heaven who shall seem misfits to others there, it will 
indeed be a very dull place, with a sameness and lack of 
- variety very likely to* bore many of the elect and make 
others downright tired. In heaven the fit and the misfit 
should find a place. All will be made to fit and all will 
survive. All that I have been saying on the topic of heavenly 
fitness is of course based upon the assumption that there is a 
heaven. Religious martyrs must have been unfit for earth, 
otherwise they would have survived the sword and the 
torch. and the stake of persecution in the world’s greatest 
religious wars. So the fittest for heaven were the unfittest 
for earth. Yet they were sent on earth so as to fit themselves 
for heaven. What a manifest contradiction is here met 
with ! 

Nothing so thoroughly shows the curious phases of re- 
ligious creeds as the Mohammedan and Christian tenets 
-asserting that the physical bodies of this life shall all rise 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 397 

from their graves on the judgment day, the doomsday men- 
tioned so often in early English history and literature. But 
if it be true, as science teaches, that every human body under- 
goes a complete physical mutation every seven years, then 
how will the dust or loam that has changed a dozen times 
in the span of one life be able to foregather in one body at 
doomsday. Or how will the physical nutriment of abandoned 
cemeteries be ever able to determine to which of the many 
human bodies that it may have nourished its true allegiance 
must be given on Judgment Day? 

But these reflections simply serve as the measure of our 
limitations and our despair in dealing with the problems of 
the After Life. 

“Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who 
Before us passed the door of Darkness through, 

Not one returns to tell us of the Road, 

Which to discover we must travel, too?” 

Despite all, however, I am inclined to think that there is 
a God and a heaven. But the heaven is probably neither a 
reward nor a punishment, but a state of rest and more or 
less blissful existence, especially after the departed souls 
are quieted in conscience sufficiently to be able to realize to 
the full the happiness to be attained by compliance with 
Hamlet’s injunction to his father’s ghost, 

“Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.” 

Thus the practical value that all problems of the Here- 
after should have for reasonable beings is to be found in the 
fact that all religion, of whatever kind, or by whatever name 
it may be known, is but the apothesis of a human hope. 
Call your God by what name you will, worship Him and 
honor Him under what ceremonies, or rituals or formularies 
you will. He is simply the same God under the different 
names of Zeus, Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Buddha, the Unknow- 
able, the Great White Spirit, the Great Supreme Father, the 
Almighty and Supreme Being, the immanent and creative 
power in matter or in nature— under each and all of these 


398 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


names is only one power or force, and He is simply one and 
the same Being, no matter what the name He may be known 
by. From this ‘we should draw the moral that the Golden 
Rule is as true in religion as in all other things in nature, 
and that we should do unto other people’s Gods as we would 
wish that they do unto our God. Just as the individual 
citizens of all nations have the same human nature, so they 
have the same God in common. 

Every man’s God should be my God. My God should be 
every man’s God. But heaven should not be made wholly 
a thing of the life after death. We should have some fore- 
taste of heaven on earth. We would be able to have some 
of the heavenly joys for diffusion among all the people only 
that the worship of mammon has sapped all the goodness of 
humanity. In the power and pride of money the greedy 
ones of the earth are trying to build an industrial Tower of 
Babel that shall monopolize the right of way which leads 
to heaven. So there is need of another Jehovah to restore 
competition on earth by causing a^ dispersal — a strike or 
lockout — of the laborers at work building that modern 
Tower of Babel — the giant monopoly by the industrial trusts. 
That modern Jehovah is public opinion. It is already 
aroused to the dangers of the situation. It is public opinion 
which has been shown to be the force that paralyzes some 
of the greatest trusts by causing the withdrawal of popular 
support from the trust stocks. An intelligent public opinion 
will not long continue to support monopolies that are essen- 
tially unjust. The crying need of the time is a greater 
number of fearless unsubsidized newspapers, free and inde- 
pendent of the shackles of the advertising trade magnates of 
the retail stores. Only an untrammeled, non-commercialized 
press is capable of voicing the news, of this time and all times, 
as the needs of all the people require. 

Whenever all the newspapers of this country fall under the 
control and dictation of advertising traders, then will have 
come to pass that dreadful era of industrial slavery and op- 


THE. SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


399 


pressioii of wage-earners and the common people which is 
the very farthest away of all economic developments from 
the reasonable measure of heaven on earth that humanity 
seems entitled to after the struggles and sufferings, the 
progress and civilization of the many thousand years of 
recorded human history.. 

Some poet or philosopher once wrote : 

‘‘Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense 
Lie in three words — health, peace and competence.” 

Whenever either of these is taken away permanently from 
humanity, then it will be time to look for the end of the 
human race. Humanity’s burden will have become too great 
to bear and it will be better for the children of men not to 
have been born. It will then be a rapid descent to the final 
extinction of the race— an extinction that can be prevented 
only by the elimination of the greed for gain — the gain of 
earth, not heaven. If the realization of happiness is achieved 
ill this world through the doing of justice and all manner 
of good deeds, why then it is certain that the world beyond 
the grave may always be trusted to take care of itself. 




400 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


CHAPTER LVII. 

Jealousy, deep-rooted and maddening, had been 
rankling for some time in Julian Bartlett’s bosom. 
He felt that he had rushed headlong into a somewhat 
curious matrimonial alliance. It had not dawned upon 
him in the days of his wooing that the young woman 
on whom he had been so ready to center his atten- 
tions could possibly have had a mysterious past. In 
his mind, befogged and nebulous as it often was, the 
impression had quite easily been created that Algona 
was the daughter of well-to-do people who had moved 
from some more or less bucolic district of Michigan 
into Chicago to give the beautiful, and as he thought, 
accomplished idol of their household the social op- 
portunities lacking in rustic communities. 

Sedulously, but with a tact and grace that disarmed 
suspicion, Algona herself had inculcated the belief 
that her life in Chicago and all her city experiences 
had begun at the date of her parents’ arrival in the 
fashionable suburb, Kenwood, and that she had resided 
there at the family home ever since. Her acquaint- 
ance with Verrazano Beverly she explained by claim- 
ing that she met him in an accidental, but perfectly 
conventional and formal way — which was a true 
enough statement, so far as it went. She had under- 
stood, she averred, that he was a well-to-do widower, 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


401 


but despite his evident wealth she claimed that she 
soon learned to dislike him. His attentions she then 
dispensed with. 

Such was all she disclosed of her history to Julian, 
except — that once she took occasion to reveal some 
details of a romantic passion of which she was the 
object in her girlhood days, but her schoolboy lover 
was dead long since, dead and buried at Blue Pigeon 
in the little cemetery beside the white church on the 
hill. 

Scarcely was he married a month, however, when 
certain unexpected circumstances sowed the seeds of 
doubt in Julian’s mind as to the past of the young 
woman who had become his wife. He discovered 
that she was paying money out at a lavish rate to a 
waiter who had been discharged from the great hotel 
on the Lake Front and whom drunkenness and dis- 
sipation were gradually disqualifying for work. It 
was a chance discovery. But it led to an important 
sequel — the knowledge that the fellow believed he was 
being paid the large sums by the dashing and beau- 
tiful Mrs. Bartlett as a bribe or hush-money to in- 
duce him to keep the secrets of her past life locked 
firmly in his own breast. 

One day Julian laid a trap for this fellow and from 
him learned enough to confirm his worst suspicions. 
A stormy interview ensued between Algona and the 
enraged husband, the object of whose jealousy was 
Edward Randall. For hours and days at a time a 
tirade of denunciation was directed by Julian at his 


402 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

young wife for her friendliness of the past with that 
“old rake’’ Beverly, and for her present friendliness 
with Randall. He did not know anything definite as 
to her friendliness with either, all that the waiter had 
let slip being that she had been meeting both very 
often — Beverly at first, then Randall. But the aroused 
husband expected to be able to find the blackmailing 
waiter in his cups some day, and then to glean from 
him — for pay, if necessary — all the secrets that he 
may have to tell about “Miss Algie,” as the lackey 
persisted in calling Algona, even after she had her- 
self told him that she is now “a married woman,” 
and he “must remember that.” 

In the meantime Julian kept up a pretense of friend- 
ship for Randall, though all the while cherishing a 
deep scheme of vengeance against him. It was 
Julian’s nature to nurse revenge and he had the cour- 
age, the hardihood and the desperation to strike a , 
swift and terrible blow out of the dark — the sort of 
blow that would cause him to gloat in secret over a 
triumph of deep-dyed vengeance. In his estimate of 
Julian’s characteristic traits and leanings Randall 
made the mistake of assuming that as a married man 
the former prince of rounders would be as utterly 
lackadaisical and demoralized as before. 

Perhaps it was because of the absurdity of the in- 
sinuation as to the meaning of her friendship for 
Randall that Algona failed to convey to that adven- 
turous person any intimation that her husband was 
jealous of him. The truth was that while she was 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 403 

thoroughly aware of Randalhs condition of mind in 
reference to herself, she was nevertheless as com- 
pletely uninterested in him as at any time since the 
unpleasant experience of her first meeting with him. 

But there was a deep reason for her apparent friend- 
ship with the accomplished and unscrupulous black- 
leg, though what that reason really was had never 
been more than dimly outlined in the conjectures of 
Julian’s active and resourceful brain. As a matter 
of fact, Algona wished to seal Randall’s lips by treat- 
ing him kindly. She was so well aware of the young 
fellow’s unscrupulous bent of mind that she shud- 
dered to think of the embarrassing disclosures he 
could make about her life since he first met her in 
Chicago. If she should treat him coolly or ignore him 
he could easily circulate scandalous stories so that 
they would quickly reach the ears of the man whom 
she had married. True, he had promised her that 
he would undergo vivisection — “be cut up into small 
bits,” was the way he expressed it — aye, die, if he 
must, rather than disclose aught that he ever knew 
or surmised in reference to her career. But she was 
doubtful as to the value of his word in a promise 
of that kind. Still, she failed to understand him 
properly in that particular, for it was a fact that he 
vigorously observed and was faithfully bound by that 
promise — the only promise of his life that he ever 
respected. Not only did he never utter a disrespect- 
ful word concerning her, but it became a sort of pas- 
sion with him to harbor no thoughts about her save 


404 the sword of tpie advertiser. 

the kindest, tenderest and most respectful of which 
his depraved nature was capable. 

What the real truth in reference to Algona’s feel- 
ings is, and has been for some time, could be known 
only to her own heart. It is that she is deeply, com- 
pletely, but hopelessly in love with John Lodge. Nat- 
urally kind-hearted, sweet of disposition, unselfish and 
affectionate, she was led into a wayward course only 
because she was so utterly the victim of hard circum- 
stances. True, she inherited a strain of revengeful- 
ness in her blood, and perhaps it was this taint which 
caused her to devise the plot for the ruin of Leandra 
Beverly’s innocence in the whited sepulchre. But it 
really was a relief to her to learn in good time from 
Randall that the plot had miscarried, and that at the 
critical moment the girl had been saved. 

When Algona married it was because she thought 
that she loved and always could continue to love 
Julian for his dash and good looks. But she soon 
found what a chasm separated her from this man 
whom she called husband. 'She felt that the chasm 
was ever widening. Her lukewarmness toward Julian 
grew to indifference. She realized that she did not 
love the man, never had loved him; but that her 
heart had early been consecrated to John Lodge — 
whom^to know was to love. 

After she had felt the inspiration of John’s mind, 
breathed in his presence, talked with him, walked 
with him and had been so chivalrously championed by 
him, she was completely fascinated with the beauty 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 405 

of his character and the goodness of his life and 
work and aims. But, alas, poor pitiable creature, it is 
only after she has had opportunity to contrast John’s 
kind ways with the general run of cormorant mas- 
culinity in Chicago that she thoroughly realized his 
noble-mindedness and generous unselfishness, as well 
as his many other admirable traits. Because she loved 
John Lodge she felt now that she could never be 
happy as the wife of Julian Bartlett. She, therefore, 
welcomed rather than feared the estrangement and' 
separation which she had long foreseen was to be the 
inevitable outcome of her loveless marriage. 

But her love for John Lodge — what did it mean 
to her? It had grown upon her until it absorbed every 
thought of her mind, every longing impulse of her 
womanly heart. But it all meant nothing to her save 
the tender cherishment of a delightful illusion. Poor 
helpless ensnared victim of the garish allurement of 
wealth ill-gotten and misspent for a diabolical pur- 
pose — she, unhappy, tortured creature is doomed to 
pine and languish perpetually because she feels in her 
soul that the idol of her heart is so majestically noble 
and so pure and good and true that he belongs to a 
domain which to her is practically the divine — most 
utterly and absolutely beyond her sphere of influence, 
though the influence of his personality is henceforth 
to be the anchor of hope, the inspiration, the lode- 
stone for her in an effort that she is resolved to make 
for the attainment of a worthy and noble life to be 
fledicated to humanity, charity and the doing of in- 
finite good. 


4o6 the sword of the advertiser. 

To retain the love of this woman now would have 
been an impossible task for all save one — the one to 
her so utterly unattainable. Her husband felt she was 
slipping away from him ; and whatever her unknown 
faults of the past may have been, it seemed that he 
was not willing to lose her without a struggle. 

One afternoon he brought out from his stable his 
newest automobile, built in the shape of a red dragon 
to outdo the green-dragon form of his dead uncle’s 
mastodonic horseless vehicle. 

‘T will take this scamp, Randall, on a long run into 
the country,” he murmured to himself, in low but 
vehement voice. ‘‘After I have sounded him thor- 
oughly I will tackle him with this rawhide, beat him 
and thrash him to an inch of his life and then throw 
him in some lonely place by the roadside, where he 
will have time and opportunity to reflect how unsafe 
a game it is to make love to another man’s wife.” 

He had previously made the appointment with Ran- 
dall, his ex-partner in the get-rich-quick scheme, to 
meet him down-town for a run into the country on 
a business matter in which some simple-minded bucolic 
gentleman might be sold a gold-brick or a cargo of 
“green-goods.” 

In his whirring mechanical dragon Julian took 
along with him a young “bird-dog” that he was 
training in the country amid brush-wood ' and sedge 
and cornfield as opportunity offered. Randall was 
duly called for at his hotel down-town, and the start 
for the “run into the country” was made. 


THE SWORD OE THE ADVERTISER. 


407 


It was to the north that the chosen route lay, and 
along State street the automobile was sent by the deft 
touch of Julian upon the lever. As they passed the 
Masonic Temple the dull whistle of a lake vessel sig- 
naling for passage could be heard in the river two 
blocks ahead. For some mysterious reason of pol- 
itics, or because of the business incompetence of 
municipal bridge-tenders, the whistle on the big bas- 
cule bridge was not sounded in response to the 
steamer, and the guard rails failed to fall. 

Before an opening or uplifting of the two giant 
blades or sides of the bridge could be commenced, a 
dash of speed imparted to the automobile might easily 
take the machine across the river in safety. Still, 
there was danger that the bridge might be made to 
yawn in the middle at any moment, especially as the 
heavily-laden lumber schooner was speeding forward 
rapidly in the river-bed. It seemed that a collision 
of boat and bridge must have been feared unless the 
bridge was sent up at once. An emergency demand- 
ing the saving of the valuable new bridge now existed, 
and no thought was wasted on the saving of lives. 
So the valve in the bridge-lifting machinery was 
thrown open by the bridge men and the midway 
planks began to part. Except the automobile and its 
occupants nothing that could perish or be injured was 
upon the bridge. But the auto was there sure 
enough with its three occupants, the two men and 
the dog. It had come upon the steel structure 
with a great hurst of speed— top-speed, it was 


4o8 the sword of the advertiser. 

afterward proved to be. A notion that the bridge was 
not to open possessed Julian at first. When he saw 
it begin to divide, no turning back was possible. 
Under the whizzing vehicle’s wheels the bridge was 
rising, rising. The automobile was climbing, climb- 
ing. Before the gaze of the car’s occupants the abyss 
now was opened wide. They were upon its verge, its 
brink — were toppling over into the turgid river be- 
neath. But they did not all topple. One jumped — 
Julian it was. He struck the rising south half of the 
bridge on his side and was carried forward in an in- 
voluntary slide to a place of safety upon the bridge 
abutment, forty feet below in an oblique direction. 

All else tumbled into the river in a manner alike 
thrilling, spectacular, appalling. A splash, a gurgle 
and cries of horror! Then a rope and life-buoys. 

Only the automobile was saved. 

When asked by members of the coroner’s jury at 
the inquest why he did not try to save Randall’s life 
by dragging him with himself as he leaped from the 
auto to the bridge, Julian Bartlett answered with 
much feeling : 

‘‘Whv, sirs, I did not have time to save even my 
dog.” ' 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


409 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

Some weeks after her brother’s death Sophonisba 
Beverly sought and obtained an interview with Al- 
gona. 

It was a long interview, lasting several hours. 
Next day it was resumed, and again the next. After 
that Miss Sophonisba came a few times with Dr. Bar- 
rett and a lawyer. 

Algona had been fully identified as Begonia Dil- 
lingham. Her life history, up to the time of her ar- 
rival in Chicago, had been fully traced. The mysteri- 
ous couple who brought her out of the woods of 
Minnesota were found to be her father’s brother and 
his wife, both now dead. Her name Algona had been 
given to -her by the Indian tribe in one of whose vil- 
lages she lived — the reason for the name being that 
her father had in his veins the blood of the gr^at 
tribe of the Algonquins. In the locket worn for so 
long as a pendant from the gold chain upon her 
shapely neck — a keepsake or heirloom in reference to 
which she now felt that the time for opening it had 
at last arrived — was found a medalion group of mini- 
ature pictures exactly similar to those in the locket 
photographed in its place at Verrazano Beverly’s 
throat in the X-ray snapshot at the mirage of the 
automobile among the clouds. 


410 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


Only two copies of this group of pictures had ever 
been made — one of the copies being the group in the 
locket that was taken from Verrazano Beverly by the 
holdup men, and the other copy having been pro- 
duced by a photographer at the order of Miss 
Sophonisba shortly before she accorded to her brother 
the privilege of wearing the memento for his dead 
sister’s sake. 

When she realized that three of her companions in 
the picture were Julian and his mother and uncle — all 
friends of her own well beloved, but unremembered 
mother — Algona, or Begonia, was shocked inexpres- 
sibly. The discovery amazed and astonished her. 

She was dazed and dumbfounded, horrified and ter- 
rified at the waywardness of fate. She was pros- 
trated for many days. 

Estrangement amounting almost to separation now 
divided the two members of the Bartlett household, 
which was rived in twain by misunderstandings and 
difficulties that had proved inadjustable. Truth com- 
pels the statement, however, that in none of the quar- 
rels or discussions was Algona the aggressor. She 
was at first passive; then she became utterly indiffer- 
ent. 

*‘You don’t love me any more — don’t even give me 
a thought?” Julian was wont to say to her. 

''That is true, very true, my poor boy,” was her 
customary reply. 

"Then who has taken my place in your affections?” 
he would say. "You know *the saying in such a pass 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 4I I 

— there is always someone else. Oh, if I only knew 
him I would make his life miserable ! Once I thought 
it was that young fellow, Randall. But he is dead. 
And besides, I don’t believe now that he was anything 
at all to you.” 

“Nothing at all; no one is — not even, no, not even 
my husband, much though I regret to say it.” 

“But, we can’t go on this way — can’t continue to 
live toget — ” 

“I fully realize that, and I wish we could end it — 
the sooner the better.” 

“But what will become of you? It is easy enough 
for the man to get along.” 

“What will become of me? Why, I will become 
myself again. In this great, big, bewildering place 
that they call Chicago, I am not myself — have never 
been myself. I want to go away, go far into the 
country — into the woods — with the flowers and the 
leaves and the snow berries, and forget all things that 
I have seen or known in this dreadful city — forget all 
— all except, except ” 

“Yes, except one person — and who is he?” demand- 
ed Julian, almost fiercely. 

“Julian, my poor boy, you must not let yourself 
become morbid,” she said, with a gentle touch 
upon his arm. “Don’t you see, can’t you see, that 
what I am pining for is the rest and peace and quiet 
of the simple, care-free, nerve-restoring country life 
to which I was accustomed before experiencing the 
false fascinations of existence in a big city? To that 


4T2 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


simple, restful life I want to return at once, and as 
you say you could not endure the dreadful dullness of 
country life, there is nothing for us to do but to part 
company and go our separate ways.” 

‘‘Algona, it is you who are morbid, silly, ridicul — ” 

And Julian would launch forth into a tirade which 
was an admixture of appeal, upbraiding and recrim- 
ination — a style of argument that made reconciliation 
more of an impossibility than before. 

Then Algona would retreat to the fortress of do- 
mesticity, her suite of private rooms, where she would 
remain secluded for days together, living alone with 
her thoughts, her heart feeding ceaselessly upon its 
own fires — the fires of her hopeless love for John 
^ Lodge. 

She knew he was nothing to her — never could be 
anything. Her love for him was the only real love of 
her life. It was a tender and true love, a noble and 
rare love. Poor tortured soul, if her life had been 
as stainless as it might have been — as it should have 
been and would have been in a world not industrially 
enslaved — her love for John Lodge would have been 
as pure and beautiful as ever was the love of a 
womanly woman for a manly man. 

Her discovery of her absorbing love for the young 
publisher had a softening and mellowing influence that 
refined and infinitely ennobled her every thought and 
impulse. No more was she revengeful ; she had dis- 
missed forever all thoughts of reprisals against the 
house of P>eyerly. Indeed, the one thought which, 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 413 

next to her love for John Lodge, now brought most 
happiness and pleasure into her sad life was that her 
plot for the downfall of Leandra Beverly had mis- 
carried at the critical moment. It was the vengeful 
trait inherited from her distant Algonquin ancestor 
that must have moved her to plot such a dreadful pro- 
gramme of vicarious punishment. That, at least, was 
what she now believed, and she heartily rejoiced that 
the bitter-sweet weed of such a hankering after ven- 
geance had at last been uprooted from her nature and 
cast aside forever. 

One day Julian insisted on another interview — the 
one that proved to be his last with this beautiful 
creature caging herself in his home. 

^There are others, you know,’’ he said at the close 
of this talk, which was stormy to the last degree. 
man can always obtain the society of pleasant and 
companionable women.” 

^'Very well, find them, one or more,” replied Al- 
gona. “I am leaving this house at once.” 

She left. 

They went their separate ways. 

Each had a comfortable fortune. 

After his uncle’s death Julian had thought better 
of his plan to sue the Beverly estate for the unpaid 
portion of his mother’s patrimony. He revoked his 
instructions to the lawyers whom he had retained for 
the purpose of instituting legal proceedings. In a 
conference with the executors of the late Verrazano 
Beverly, of whom Dr. Barrett is one, the claimant was 


414 the sword of the advertiser. 

given a settlement satisfactory to all concerned ; un- 
der an order of court the entire assets of the Beverly 
estate were converted either into cash or gilt-edged, 
dividend-paying securities. This necessitated a sale 
of the vast business built up by the Beverly family 
during two generations. Terms of sale were not 
made public, but it was announced that the purchasers 
were the junior partners in the firm, and that they 
would continue the business. How they were able to 
command the capital necessary for the purchase was 
a good deal of a mystery. 

When the new management came into charge of 
the big store Julian received a handsome sum in cash 
— a sum that he accepted in full settlement of his 
claim as one of the Beverly heirs. Only one other 
heir remained — Leandra. For her, under the terms 
of the financial settlements, a fortune not so large as 
might have been expected — but still quite ample and 
running up into the millions — was assured. 

Still another inheritance was paid about this time 
to its rightful owner. To Algona the legacy from 
her mother, with compound interest to the last cent 
earned, was turned over by Sophonisba Beverly 
through the proper legal channels. 

With the settlement of Julian’s claim against the 
Beverly estate came a restoration to Miss Sophonisba 
of the locket taken by force from her brother. 
The restoration was made in a mysterious way. It 
was done through the postoffice, the trinket having 
l)een sent anonymously through the mails to the ad- 
dress of Miss Beverly. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 415 

After closely examining the article and finding it in 
good condition, Miss Sophonisba took the miniature 
photograph from its casement in the locket and wrote 
upon it with indelible ink for a few moments. 

Next day this same heirloom reached Algona’s 
hands. She was deeply affected as she recognized the 
small, fine handwriting in the fresh, indelible ink. It 
was directly beneath the picture of her mother, and 
read : 

“A mother is a mother still, 

The holiest thing alive." 


/ 


7 


4i6 the sword of the advertiser. 

/ 


CHAPTER LIX. 

Industrial typhoons in the form of strikes and labor 
troubles have swept Chicago many times from center 
to circumference. Those same labor difficulties, which 
have been regarded as far too numerous and often 
avoidable — but which the sociologists believe to be in- 
evitable, pending an industrial readjustment that shall 
replace the broken-down and manifestly inequitable 
wages-system with a system based on profit-sharing 
or co-operation — have caused the industrial and social 
atmosphere of the most progressive city in the world 
to become surcharged at times with possibilities of 
revolution. 

Stress and strife have been rife on these occasions. 
Each successive strike crisis has been fraught with 
the elements of a real and pressing danger to the es- 
tablished order that your political economist defends 
and tries to dignify with the distinguished and men- 
tally oppressive appellation of ‘‘a. natural law.” Each 
recurring deadlock between an employer and his em- 
ployes presented a real and obvious menace to the 
peace and happiness and prosperity of the community. 

Plots and counterplots of employers and employes 
were evolved by the active brains of well-paid men, 
hired specially for that sort of service, while all the 
time the weather-beaten ship of the wage-paying and 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


417 


sweat-shop system was being marooned on the dan- 
gerous rocks of public disfavor. 

That the ill-ballasted craft of the wages-system has 
not gone to pieces and been sunk forever out of sight 
in the overwhelming sea of popular condemnation and 
execration will doubtless become in the not very dis- 
tant future one of the wonders of the world. More 
than a dozen times, in as many years, the demons of 
riot and violence and bloodshed and anarchy held in 
a menacing grasp the great city on Lake Michigan’s 
shores. And all because the prosperous, money-mak- 
ing business men are fighting the labor unionists’ 
movement — the only agency that is responding in the 
world today to the modern altruistic demand that each 
half of the world should know how the other half 
lives. Thus the modern Poor Richard is unlike the 
Poor Richard of Franklin’s day. Your modern in- 
dustrial philosopher is a practical political-economist 
— a toiler, not an unpractical theorist. He represents 
the one-half of the world that has a right to know, 
but does not know, how the other half lives in com- 
fort or extravagance. True, he knows not just how 
himself or the “world-half” to which he belongs has 
managed to subsist from day to day. But it often 
happens that he is as much of a philosopher as 
Franklin’s literary creation, and he knows that the 
social and industrial conditions of the days of Poor 
Richard were far from ideal for people earning their 
bread in the sweat of their brows. In fact, this mod- 
ern Poor Richard is beginning to realize the giant’s 


N 


4i8 the sword of the advertiser. 

str^ength that he possesses through organization, and 
the moment he begins to use that strength as a giant, 
why, then the successful and money-making managers 
of the larger business enterprises — iwhich are the con- 
cerns employing nearly all wage-earners — either will 
have to capitulate and, upon the ruins of the wage- 
system, take the toilers into partnership on a profit- 
sharing and co-operative basis; or otherwise must 
surrender to the state much, if not all, of the immense 
and profitable work of production and distribution. 

Either of these two results would mean the triumph 
of a form of socialism, as profit-sharing — if made the 
universal law of the land — would simply be the co- 
operative commonwealth, meaning the direct control 
or performance by the state of the work of produc- 
tion and distribution — which would be the realization 
of state socialism, pure and simple. Either of these 
two industrial systems, profit-sharing or avowed social- 
ism, would, if enacted into law, involve radical re- 
adjustments in the wage-paying system of trade and 
industry — readjustments in reference to which it may 
be said that it is doubtful if either can be brought 
about without violence and revolution, involving po- 
litical and governmental changes that may prove to be 
more of a setback than an advance for the sacred 
cause of human progress. 

John Lodge, as we have seen, was a strenuous op- 
ponent of a great many ideals in the socialist creed. 
He did not subscribe to the figment that a socialist 
state would mean slavery for the masses. A socialist 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


419 


state, if real and not an oligarchy, would have admin- 
istrators elected by all the people, and no free people 
have ever enslaved themselves by voluntary act. 

But John was a strong believer in the optimistic 
creed of individualism. For pessimistic individualism 
he had absolutely no liking. Still, he was an optim- 
istic individualist only up to a certain point. He 
believed that the moment it became clear that the big 
stores and the big factories, and the other large firms 
or corporations engaged in the production and dis- 
tribution of life’s necessities, became oppressive to the 
majority of the people, the law should step in and 
with drastic hand so regulate and curb the oppressors 
that a proper measure of relief might instantly be 
obtained for the public. 

In the firm belief that ironclad socialism would be 
a bar against progress, John Lodge had opposed that 
cult consistently, but courteously and with toleration 
for all. Yet, he never lost sight of the fact that a 
measure of real socialism pervades the political and 
civic cosmogony of modern times, and that in noth- 
ing is the influence of this socialistic leaven so mani- 
fest as in the great part it plays in arousing and keep- 
ing alive a healthy public sentiment in favor of the 
right, as against mere might. His travels and studies 
abroad had familiarized him with the fact that Eng- 
land — the most progressive nation of the world, de- 
spite just criticism of her oppressions of weaker na- 
tions — had enacted the admirable socialistic law of 
taxation for the incomes of her well-to-do citizens as 


420 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

well as abolished, through another piece of socialistic 
legislation, the dual ownership of Ireland’s farms. In 
reference to the output of the modern factories and 
distributing houses engaged in trade and industry it 
was rigidly held by John Lodge that a duality of 
ownership exists between employer and employe ; yet, 
that the lion’s share is taken by one party in every 
such business enterprise — and that it is not the party 
of the wage-earners that plays the leonine role. Too 
long, he claimed, had the money changers been per- 
mitted to be the paramount partners of all the people. 

How to aid wage-earners to obtain, without a re- 
sort to violence or revolution, a just share of the 
abundant rewards from their labor had become the 
mission of John Lodge. It was a mission that grad- 
ually unfolded itself to him ; and at first it was a 
grievous burden to him and its solution a puzzle that 
baflfled him for months. He would not entertain the 
favorite dictum of the pessimists, that things indus- 
trial would go from bad to worse until the smash 
and the crash came in a revolution — and then the 
crimson deluge. Still, it grieved him to note that in 
the course of the incessant struggle between capital 
and labor, employer and employe, the trend of pub- 
lic sentiment had gradually reached the point at which 
no act of violence, short of murder, was condemned 
in wage-earners striving or striking for improved 
conditions in pay or in the systems of working hours 
Much as he had schooled himself in the creed of an 
optimist he could not bring himself to regard the in- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


421 


dustrial situation, not only in Chicago, but through- 
out this great country of 80,000,000 people, as any- 
thing other than ominous. It was a situation that 
he foresaw would soon try men’s souls, and for him 
personally would put to the test the working value 
of his optimistic creed as well ae its necessary con- 
comitant — his faith in human progress. 

“The golden rule of the middle course” had always 
been a cardinal principle of John Lodge’s life. He 
saw that in the judicial and executive systems of the 
American government a wise and admirable system 
of checks and balances — the driving wheels of the 
golden rule — had been introduced. Why should not 
a similar or analogous system of checks and balances 
be introduced between capital and labor in their im- 
portant relations to each other and to the state? 
Through what agencies could the general equities of 
the golden rule be made serviceable to the public in 
matters of trade and industry? Could that glorious 
epitome of fair-play and justice be properly invoked 
in industrial matters? And if invoked, could it be 
enforced successfully? 

About the time that John’s conclusions on this topic 
were in the formative process, one of the most disas- 
trous strikes in the history of labor troubles broke out 
in Chicago. Day after day whole sections of the city 
were under the sway of mob rule, riots and popular 
disturbances that the police were unable to quell or 
cope with being of hourly occurrence. Public incon- 
venience resulted and business in many lines was 


422 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

badly crippled — almost at a standstill. So threaten- 
ing was the situation that a demand was being voiced 
for martial law. It was vociferously claimed in the 
most bitter section' of the quasi-charitable prints called 
the “public press” that the city was given over to 
anarchy. In the more conservative and less reckless 
of the ephemeral prints, the claims were not quite so 
wild. But even these publications affirmed that “the 
reign of law and order was replaced by a reign of 
terror,” and that mob rule was enthroned. 

Pitched battles between “strike sympathizers” and 
their opponents took place daily in the streets, and 
patrol wagons and ambulances loaded with the dead, 
the maimed and the trampled — many of them women 
and children — were to be seen dashing through the 
thoroughfares on the way to homes and hospitals often 
with howling, jeering mobs in close pursuit. The sit- 
uation indeed was most grave and decidedly threaten- 
ing. To the patriotic and peaceable portion of the 

communitv the outlook was dark and ominous in the 
¥ 

extreme. 

Peace meetings of the citizens were called for sev- 
eral portions of the city. All the meetings were to 
be held simultaneously in the afternoon of a holiday 
near at hand, the speakers to come from the ranks of 
the employers of labor as well as from the organized 
forces of the wage-earning masses. It was expected 
that a unanimous demand for a settlement of the great 
strike would be formulated and promulgated by each 
of these gatherings, especially as the business involved 


THE SWORD OE THE ADVERTISER. 


4^3 


in this particular labor war was regarded as a branch 
of one of the public utilities — a fact that was held 
to give the community at large the right to be heard 
in reference to the equities of the difficulty. 

To one of these meetings John Lodge was invited 
by a citizens’ delegation which formally called upon 
him at his office and secured from him a qualified 
promise that he would attend and be a speaker. 

“It might be the better course to send a brief com- 
munication to be read at the meeting, as your at- 
tendance in person may prove an unwise move,” said 
Dr. Barrett to his young friend. 

“My dear doctor, you surprise me,” said John. 
“Why should I not attend, if they want me and I can 
spare the time? To seek and urge a settlement of 
this most dreadful of all strikes is a laudable object, 
and I may have something of importance to say to 
the meeting.” 

“Whatever you may have to say to the public you 
can always say in your newspapers, and I am really 
impressed with the force of certain reasons why you 
should stay away from that meeting,” persisted the 
physician. 

“What are the reasons? Let me hear them again, 
dear doctor. Are there anv reasons that are entirelv 
new to me ?” 

“Well, hardly, as there are few that I have not 
urged already,” replied Dr. Barrett. “Still, the all- 
sufficient reason to my mind is, now as before — that 
the socialists are numerically in the ascendancy at all 


424 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


meetings of the sort that you now are asked to attend 
and address.” 

‘‘Oh, yes, of course the socialists know that I am 
opposed to them,” said John with animation. “But, 
my dear doctor, it is to the socialists in mass meeting 
that I should like to get a chance to say a few final 
words before I set out on my long journey, as I am 
at one with them up to a certain point and have been 
anxious to make my position thoroughly understood.” 

For a few moments John was lost in deepest 
thought. The physician, respecting his friend’s si- 
lence, was silent himself. Then the younger man laid 
his hand in a gentle, beseeching move on his friend’s 
forearm and said: 

“Bear with me ; listen to me for a few minutes, and 
it may be that I shall not have occasion soon again 
to tax vour patience in reference to such a distress- 
ing subject.” 

“Proceed, go ahead, friend John,” said the other. 

“I have heard it said of some of those socialists 
who fan the flames of discontent at the meetings of 
wage-earners and strikers,” said John, “that they have 
not intelligence enough to recognize that there are 
some very rich men who are really the very best 
friends the wage-earners have in the world. Still, it 
is hard to blame these poor people for their failure 
in this regard. They feel that they do not get their 
just share of the good things of the world. They 
are asking why it is — or should be — the rule and 
practice that mankind alone of the living things in 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 425 

creation has sought and effected the investure of the 
unborn generations of posterity with rights of prop- 
erty in land and other things that the bequeathing 
forefathers simply seized and held by force, but did 
not make with their hands and never could have made. 
Birds of the air have their nests and are allowed to 
enjoy them in peace because the said nests do not 
interfere with the rights or comfort of higher or 
stronger powers in the universe. For the same rea- 
son the foxes are allowed to enjoy their habitations 
underground. But neither the birds, the foxes, nor 
the other living things in creation — except men — are 
accustomed to give, bequeath, devise and will away 
to their descendants, ‘to have and to hold forever,’ 
or for a single day or season, all the property rights 
to nesting in any or all trees; or the property rights 
to all the burrowing ever to be done under any one 
patch of land, or all lands. Yet, that is precisely 
what mankind has been doing during all the genera- 
tions that are called the golden eras of civilization. 
The birds did not bring the nesting trees into the 
world. Neither did the foxes bring with them their 
underground habitations on their arrival as baby 
foxes.* 

“It may be right and proper enough for a state or 
nation of birds or foxes to have and to hold for regu- 
lation or distribution among the younger generations 
all the nesting or burrowing rights within the grasp 
or vision of such feathery or foxy state or nation. 
So, too, it might be with mankind under the present 


426 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

quaint and curious systems of civilization. The wage- 
earners are the non-propertied masses of the people 
in every country to-day. They merit sympathy, con- 
sideration and friendship; and treatment as just and 
fair as is possible under the present oppressive indus- 
trial systems. They should be the paramount part- 
ners in all industrial affairs. Furthermore, it may be 
said with truth that the non-propertied masses merit 
the thanks, the gratitude of the possessing minority. 
Why they really merit thanks is because of their for- 
bearance under the heart-breaking, body-dwarfing 
hardships imposed on them in mill and factory, sweat- 
shop and big store. Well may we shudder to think 
what would become of the social fabric if the bread- 
less ones in a world that has bread and to spare had 
not been shown by events to belong as a rule to the 
category of those who in suffering all seem to suffer 
nothing, and who bear with all manner of injustice 
and sorrow for the sake of peace and lest the flood- 
tide of human blood should flow.” 

“Why, friend John, you astound me,” said the doc- 
tor. “Beware, or in no time you will fie a convert to 
socialism. That’s the sort of reasoning that makes 
socialists.” 

With the sweet and ennobling glow of love for all 
mankind lighting up his honest face, the young pub- 
licist answered in gentle, subdued accents: 

“My dear friend, I am not a socialist, nor hardly 
any other sort of a theorist for that matter, except an 
optimist is to be so classified. By the way, you are 


THE SWORD THE ADVERTISER. 427 

known to be a good deal of a socialist yourself, though 
you may not admit it. For my part, what I really am 
is a y earner for the restoration of the reign of justice 
upon the earth ; a sort of optimist with longings akin 
to those of Isaiah, except that the messiad of my hope 
and creed is not a spiritual but an industrial redemp- 
tion. This redemption, emancipation or messiad will 
be an evolution, not a revloution. Industrial redemp- 
tion will not be brought about by any one man or 
woman ; or any set of men or women, for that mat- 
ter. It will be accomplished by minds, not numbers; 
by a union of the forces of justice, brotherly love and 
honor working outward and upward to the glow and 
glory of the industrial paradise that is to come. 

‘‘Whether this redemption from the slavery of the 
industrial wage system — which leaves all things to» 
the generosity or ‘charity’ of the employer instead of 
compelling his recognition and enactment of the prin- 
ciples of even and exact justice — whether this redemp- 
tion is to be brought about by means of socialism, 
or in some other way, I know not; nor do I pretend 
to know. But what I do know is that some such 
measure as socialism — or joint endeavor on a scale of 
some magnitude, but still merely of partial scope — 
may well be used, and doubtless will be used, to secure 
and maintain a healthy, restraining competition by the 
state or public as a check upon the powers of extor- 
tion possessed by producing and distributing monop- 
olies.” 

“Oh, you would have half-way socialism. Is that 


428 THE SWORD OF TH^ ADVERTISER. 

your plan? And at the meeting you will tell your 
views on that point?” 

“I mav. But mv creed is not half-wav socialism so 
much as American democracy. It is the democracy 
of Washington, Jefferson and Jackson; yea, of Lin- 
coln and Tilden. It is the democracy that is build- 
ing and has built — in territory justly acquired — the 
governmental canals and railroads that are designed 
with a view to securing a competitive check or alter- 
native to the vast transportation systems in the hands 
of individuals or private corporations. 

“Really, the great public grievance of the time is 
that government too long has abdicated its function 
as the protector of the helpless weak against the ex- 
tortionate strong. Nor is there any more just or 
proper way for the exercise of such a wholesome 
function of government than in establishing and 
maintaining a reasonable competition in the produc- 
tion and distribution of the necessaries of life. To 
serve adequately this end it would not be necessary 
that the state own or operate more than one-third to 
one-half of the agencies, plants or ^means’ of produc- 
tion and distribution. To have the state own and 
operate all industries would be to put an embargo 
upon progress and initiative. That would be a plan 
which could hardly fail to defeat the competitive ends 
in view — perhaps would even defeat the ends of jus- 
tice. For it would seem unquestionable — and prob- 
ably always will be unquestionable — that individuals 
have the right to engage in private business of a 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 429 

gainful sort so long as others, the public or individ- 
uals — but most especially the public — are not wronged 
or oppressed by the operations of the said private 
concern/’ 

‘‘Socialism is notoriously a jealous goddess; I fear 
she will not accept your divided heart,” said the phy- 
sician. 

“I am not suing for her favors,” John replied 
quickly, and with emphasis as well as animation. 
“Besides, I am not inclined to regard her as very 
much of a goddess. Under certain conditions she 
may prove to be a deity and attain apotheosis of a 
dubious kind, but I am doubtful whether her nature 
has not in it more of the traits of the imperious ad- 
venturess than of the homely virtues of true, helpful 
womanhood. I have a plan for giving her just as 
much political power as is good for her.” 

“You have a plan for giving her power!” gasped 
the physician. “Well, friend John, that is decidedly 
interesting — extremely interesting, in fact and fancy.” 

John was silent, almost confused. He sat with 
bowed head, as if expecting a fusilade of badinage 
from the doctor. But the doctor was too sincere an 
admirer of his young friend’s noble character and 
beneficent purposes to chaff him to any extent, and 
his voice was keyed in kindly, sympathetic note as 
he said : 

“To deal effectively and fairly with the growing 
fad of socialism would indeed be a colossal achieve- 
ment; but, whatever your plan in that regard may 


430 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


be, I am sure it deserves and will meet with respect- 
ful consideration from everybody, and most espe- 
cially from your friends.” 

“My good and kind friend,” said John, “I see you 
are anxious to learn what I meant when my enthu- 
siasm led me a moment since to reveal information 
of a project which I have long been perfecting and 
the disclosure of which I was keeping as a surprise 
for you. But now that the little secret is out, I may 
as well tell you in a general way, and without entering 
into details which are to be disclosed for the first time 
at the meeting this afternoon, that I have evolved 
an adequate and perfectly feasible and practical plan 
for forcing the entire body of employers in state and 
nation to permit public opinion to fix and determine 
in all cases the exact amount of wages to be consid- 
ered just and fair — and to be paid, or that should be 
paid — in every store, factory or other business con- 
cern in all this broad land.” 

“If you have found such a panacea, yclept for ages 
the Utopian dream,” said the physician, “and can 
show that it will work in actual practice, without in- 
volving real injury to the just rights of anybody, you 
will have contributed lasting benefits to the cause of 
progress, peace and humanity. It will be a wonderful 
achievement, and I hope you will succeed; but you 
could exploit the plan as well in your newspapers as 
at the strike-settling meeting this afternoon, which 
meeting after all may disappoint you and prove un- 
sympathetic, unresponsive, unappreciative.” 


THE SWORD OF TJIE ADVERTISER. 


431 

‘'Bu^ I have sent word to Professor Cobb that I 
will attend.^’ 

'‘Send him another word that you will not attend.” 

"No, my dear doctor, I simply can not break my 
word; I must and shall be present.” 

"Then read this anonymous letter and be fore- 
armed; for though I too shall be there if you are 
there, still it is right that you should know what deep 
and dark conspiracies are supposed to be hatched not 
only against your plans but against your life — yea, the 
very life of one who never injured anybody, but 
would do good to all.” 

As he spoke the doctor’s voice was choked with 
emotion. His gaze was averted and tears glistened 
in his eyes. He handed to John Lodge the following 
letter : 


Chicago, Tuesday. 

Dr. W. a. Barrett. 

Dear Sir; — A conspiracy exists against the life of John 
Lodge. It has been formed by a cabal in the radical wing 
of a political party that boasts of a mission to free the 
industrial and political institutions of the day from the 
slavish system of wages, rent and interest. By accident I 
overheard the' talk of the conspirators plotting a foul murder. 
Later I heard them again, then again, and again. There is 
no possibility that I am mistaken. 

Because I recognize that Mr. Lodge is an industrial saint, 
not an industrial sinner, I have thought it right to make 
known td you, his best friend, what I have learned of the 
shameful conspiracy against his life. 

To be forewarned is, or should be, to be forearmed. 

A desperate band of fanatics, imbued with the most rabid 


432 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


hatred of law and order, have reached the curious conclusion 
that John Lodge is today the greatest stumbling-block in 
their pathway to the goal of the millenium of no-government. 
They aver that his plan seems to be to mend, not destroy, 
the competitive wage-earning system. Any mending or cob- 
bling of that system they hold would but prolong the 
agonies of the whole industrial world. Brief agony of one, 
they claim, is less cruel than a further prolongation of the 
agonies of all. Therefore they have decreed a terrible fate 
for your innocent, noble-hearted friend, the supposed stum- 
bling-block in their way. 

Such is the horrible plot. To the last details it is ar- 
ranged. Whether the bullet, the knife or the bomb shall be 
used will depend upon circumstances, as each of the half- 
dozen conspirators in this cabal has volunteered to take the 
life of your friend on the very first occasion that the oppor- 
tunity is presented. 

Sincerely yours and his, 

A Well-wisher. 

As he perused the letter John Lodge was calm and 
thoughtful, but if he was mentally disturbed he did 
not show it. While his eyes ran over the document, 
blurred and rather illegible in patches, he did not 
utter a word. His cheeks did not blanch ; his chin 
did not droop ; his eyes were not bulging wildly from 
their sockets. Having finished reading and examin- 
ing the missive, he quietly laid the document upon 
the desk at the doctor’s elbow, but never a word did 
he utter even then. He coughed softly to attract the 
attention of the physician, who persisted in staring 
out of a window. 

‘'Well, what is to be done?” asked the doctor, at 
last. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 433 

^‘Nothing/’ said John. 

'‘You are in hourly peril of your life,” urged the 
physician, “and surely you will not attend that meet- 
ing after such a dreadful warning?” 

“Oh, yes, I will attend.” 

“Then you don’t take any stock in that letter. But 
I tell you it is true. I know it is. The handwriting 
I happened to be familiar with, though it was some- 
what disguised. It is the writing of the man known 
as ‘Goosey’ — the former newspaper artist and scene 
painter, Rembrandt Van Dyke Swayne. I heard he 
had gone through with all the money he got from 
Miss Sophonisba Beverly and was back again in his 
old haunts with his old cronies. He is a good-hearted 
poor fellow, and after I recognized his penmanship I 
sought and found him. Behind locked doors he ad- 
mitted the authorship of the letter and told me all, 
though he was and is in deathly fear of the vengeance 
of the conspirators. He overheard the plotters in a 
rear room of a saloon frequented by anarchists. He 
is not positively certain of the identity of any mem- 
bers of the conspirators’ gang, but he strongly sus- 
pects two or three men whose voices he believes he 
recognized. He is convinced you will be murdered 
unless you take unusual precautions for self-protec- 
tion.” 

“I will take no unusual precautions,” said John. 
“Furthermore, I will attend the meeting this after- 
noon. True, that letter is not very pleasant reading, 
but I do not fear to die. If death is to come to-day. 


434 the sword of the advertiser. 

it will not come to-morrow. ’Twere as welcome now 
as any time. I am likely to be ready soon as later, 
and we have it on the most excellent authority of 
Hamlet that hhe readiness is all.’ ” 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER, 


435 


CHAPTER LX. 

When John Lodge reached the hall at Randolph 
and Dearborn streets to address the peace-meeting of 
the strikers and the public he was given an ovation, 
his appearance in the doorway being the signal for an 
outburst of enthusiastic and prolonged applause. 

An observer of conditions at this gathering would 
have noticed at once that it was composed of a 
heterogeneous crowd of workingmen representative of 
several branches of the Caucasian family. In com- 
plexion the rank and file of the assemblage were about 
equally divided between the dark-haired and the light 
or fair of hair — the dark being the Celtic, Anglo- 
Saxon and Latin element, and the light or fair the 
Teutonic and Scandinavian infusion. Another mat- 
ter that might attract the attention of a close observer 
would be the unusually large representation of city 
detectives at the meeting, both on the platform and in 
the body of the hall, and that these detectives led away 
from the precincts of the building and temiporarily 
arrested several of the light-haired gentry and a few 
of the darker or swarthy ones found lurking around 
the doorways and aisles through which the several 
speakers had to pass in reaching the platform. 

It was especially noticeable that a great number 
of suspicious looking characters rushed forward tur- 


436 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

bulently and impetuously as John Lodge entered the 
hall. His progress down a side aisle in the direction 
of the platform door was impeded, almost blockaded. 
But just at this moment a platoon of uniformed 
policemen emerged into the hall from a large ante- 
chamber and, deploying in long double rows, formed 
a lane or passage way through which Mr. Lodge 
passed in safety to the stage. 

Still another thing which might be noticed at this 
time was that Dr. W. H. Barrett and a large party 
of representative citizens occupied several tiers of seats 
at the front of the platform. It should be said 
that the physician was pale and wan, and had an 
air of anxiety that grew into excitement which caused 
him to jump to his feet and gaze ahead in trepidation 
as he recognized John Lodge’s familiar face and form 
among the crushing, crowding throngs at the door- 
way. He left the platform and quickly went to meet 
the newcomer. No doubt the physician saw a menace 
in the crush. But he was unable to get near enough 
to John to speak to him in any other than an informal 
way. 

It was with a serious mien that 'the physician re- 
turned John’s smiling and pleasant salute. To the 
others of his acquaintances on the platform or its 
vicinity John Lodge also bowed cordial salutations. 
But no time was given him to speak a private word 
to anybody, as cries of ‘‘Lodge! Lodge” arose from 
all parts of the hall. 

So vociferous and insistent was the vast audience 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


437 

in its demand to hear Mr. Lodge that the chairman 
of the peace-gathering arose to introduce the young 
publisher at once for the delivery of the promised 
speech. 

The audience had been put in good humor by sev- 
eral prior speeches in favor of industrial peace, the 
most notable utterance being a great address by 
Rudolph Cobb, who intimated very broadly in a glow- 
ing peroration that Mr. Lodge might be found to have 
something to say that day which would make the 
occasion forever memorable in the annals of indus- 
trial progress. 

When the applause subsided, the chairman briefly 
introduced Mr. Lodge as ‘‘the next president of the 
United States.” Again the cheering started, to be 
kept up even longer than before. 

Taking his cue from the sentiment of the great audi- 
ence, the chairman now expressed the hope that there 
was no truth in the persistent rumor that Mr. Lodge 
was to leave the country at this time on a trip around 
the world. 

“We wish to let him know that he is wanted here 
at home just now and will here be wanted for some 
time to come,” declared the presiding citizen. “Young 
though he is, it is yet a fact that his splendid ability 
is amply demonstrated. He is tried and true. Gifted 
with wisdom beyond his years, his honesty and patri- 
otism, his tact and fearlessness, his benevolence and 
the burning love of justice in his soul are not less 
notable than his manifest executive ability. Verily, 


THE SV^ORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


438 . 

he thinks great thoughts, which he promptly trans- 
lates into noblest deeds. By nature brave and gener- 
ous, he favors the golden rule of conciliation, tolera- 
tion and compromise wherever or whenever the rights 
of others — or the rights of all — are involved. We 
need just such a man in the White House at this time 
— a modern St. George who would go forth and con- 
quer the dragon of industrial monopoly — overthrow 
the blighting rule of the tariff-gorged trusts. We 
want him in the White House — in the presidential 
chair at the nation^s capital — and there we shall put 
him, if he only will consent to become the presiden- 
tial candidate of all the people.” 

Tremendous cheering greeted this declaration of the 
citizen-chairman. 

“He will consent!” “He will, he will!” “And the 
wage earners will elect him!” were the exclamations 
that now came in a great, resounding chorus from 
thousands of “Lodge enthusiasts” in the vast audience. 

When John Lodge at last had a chance to make 
himself heard, he thanked the audience for the m.ani- 
festations of friendliness and good will toward him. 

He did not forget the object for which the meeting 
was called, and he devoted all the opening sentences 
of his address to the topic of industrial peace, advis- 
ing an early settlement of the strike and the inaugura- 
tion of an era of real conciliation and arbitration 
between the organizations or “unions” of employers 
and employes. 

He uttered an emphatic note of warning against 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 439 

' the dangers in the pathway of organized labor. He 
pointed out that regulation of the labor movement’s 
excesses may become as much a problem of the future 
as the regulation of the commercial trusts had already 
proved to be. 

^Xabor, the oppressed of all the ages, should not 
itself become an oppression or a despotism, now that 
. it is beginning to feel its power through concentration 
and organization,” he declared. ‘'Its mission should 
be the form of evolution known as peaceable revolu- 
tion. It should be content at being able to mold and 
direct the industrial forces to a realization of the best 
form of ultimate industrial evolution. Labor’s power 
should be exercised for the bringing about of the ideal 
of the equitable economic evolution, and not for a 
violent revolution, such a revolution being more likely 
to prove reactionary than immediately progressive.” 

Having made these significant statements, John 
Lodge announced his firm belief that a way could and 
should be found for making public opinion the agency 
or power that would settle all strikes and labor trou- 
bles, whether the burning issues of the “open shop” 
or “closed shop,” by the simple but effective plan of 
giving to the said public opinion — or a law enacted 
and supported by the force of public opinion — the 
chance to decide in all cases what a fair rate of wages 
shall be. In other words, let public opinion, or the 
law of the land, fix absolutely — or as nearly as will 
approximate Justice — the rate of wages to be paid 
by employers to their employes in all legitimate lines 
of commerce, trade and industry. 


440 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


With becoming, almost hesitating, modesty he 'now 
made the startling announcement that he believed he 
had found a plan by which public opinion could and 
would be enabled to determine and decree what should 
be the fair rate of wages for services rendered in any 
and every occupation in life, and he promised that 
before the conclusion of his remarks he would fully 
expound and explain his plan. 

His speech thenceforwai d was as follows : 

Seeing as in a glass, but not darkly, one may prophesy 
the social reconstruction that soon must take place, and the 
economic changes that shall accomplish an industrial revolu- 
tion on the broad and considerate lines of true humanity 
and justice. If I were asked to attempt a forecast of the 
probable trend of these reforms, I should say that a more 
general protection of the rights of the helpless toilers as 
against the strong and powerful interests of employers will 
be insisted on, forced into law and — what is even more to 
the point— with vigor be enforced, as laws, though not 
without due regard to the doing of even and exact justice 
in compliance with the full letter and spirit of the legislative 
code. 

Public opinion will be the great motive force in accom- 
plishing and maintaining the reforms that shall secure uni- 
versal justice. Were justice done to all and by all there 
would be afforded an ample opportunity for the attainment 
by everybody of that rational degree of comfort that should 
be the rightful lot of all who wisely pursue happiness — 
that great desideratum of human existence. 

Individualism suffers to some extent — and probably always 
will suffer — whenever a distinct advance is scored for the 
sum total of human happiness and comfort. But what use 
has the individualism of an unarmed and defenseless saint 
ever proved to be against the operations of an army with 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 44I 

designs upon the holy man’s liberty, his life, or money? It 
is a good deal the same with the defenseless citizen whose 
hard-earned wages, as well as his toil, the iniquitous trusts 
seem bound to exact to the last penny. The individualism 
or liberty which the wage-earner will surrender under proper 
economic reforms is simply the liberty to starve. Indeed, 
the liberty to starve is all the liberty he now has left. Indi- 
vidually and collectively he will at least be underpaid and 
often underfed, so long as he fails to join hands with all his 
fellows in this and other nations for the reconstruction of 
the economic basis of society. This reconstruction ought 
to be possible’ of attainment on lines approximating justice — 
ideal justice being perhaps impossible • because of the selfish 
element in mankind. 

In the basic doctrine of eminent domain, or the right of 
supreme rule inherent in the people’s sovereignty, is likely to 
be found the potent germ that shall fructify into the most 
momentous economic reform of all the ages. It is held 
to be demonstrable, statistically, that the* average number 
of the unemployed among those who have to work for a liv- 
^ ing is but a small percentage of the whole, even in cities 
with the very largest populations. Thus, in Chicago the 
average number of unemployed persons among its one million 
wage-earners is not more than 10,000. So it is clear that this 
small number of unemployed would not suffer, and few or 
none of them would be allowed to become paupers or public 
charges, if the other 990,000 secured good remuneration for 
their toil. Besides, with proper economic readjustment, it 
should be made the legal duty of well-paid wage-earners to 
support the unemployed in their own^ ranks. 

Profits of capital in Chicago in a single year have been 
computed as meaning an average of $500,000 each for 200 
rich persons. Savings or profits of wage-earners for the 
same time, after living expenses are paid, mean an average 
of $3 a year for each of the 500,000 poorest paid toilers. 
In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, London and Paris the 


442 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


contrast Is still worse for the wage-earners. Is that eco- 
nomic justice? Who can doubt that a radical reconstruction 
of so inequitable a system is inevitable, with the rich so 
manifestly growing richer and yet richer? The poor in only 
a very few instances are any better off, and in some cases 
they are becoming poorer and ever more poor. Besides, in 
almost every branch of trade the business firms dealing in all 
the commodities of life, from needles to food supplies, seem 
to have taken a leaf out of the book of the great trust mag- 
nates and have met every advance in wages by increasing the 
prices that the laborers have to pay for the necessaries of 
life. Under the nonunion system of labor a premium is put 
upon low wages, the greatest measure of success coming to 
the manufacturer or business firm that can produce or sell 
mercantile commodities at the cheapest cost— which means 
underselling of competitors and very often starvation for the 
employes of the underseller. So it is better to have wages 
high, not low, even though most of the said high wages are 
paid out for life’s commodities. High wages keep high and 
dignified the standard of living among all classes of a 
nation’s population. Decadence in all the great nations of 
history was always preceded by an era of pauper wages. 

If the so-called natural law of Supply and Demand were 
made a national — or, still better, an international — law, then, 
perhaps, there would be a chance for avoidance of its in- 
justices. But as seen today In trust workings, that same 
law of Supply and Demand, which so long was the shib- 
boleth of commercial life, is become the worst of the great 
millstones now weighing down the necks of all humanity. 
Its twin brother, free and fair Competition, is dead, and 
unless a heroic remedy can change the situation, the sooner 
the big brother — the law of Supply and Demand — Is put out 
of pain, the better for humanity. This euthanasia of com- 
petition and of the law of Supply and Demand can be accom- 
plished easily enough by the adoption of national or inter- 
national socialism, which would supply every reasonable 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


443 


human need from a common stock of the useful commodities. 
But we are told every day that the shrewd people of this 
great country of home-builders will never accept socialism 
as a practical working system of general application. This, 
I am inclined to believe, is the truth. It must take scores 
of years, perhaps centuries, before the American people will 
be ready to admit that their system of democratic govern- 
ment is the failure that a general adoption of socialistic 
laws and tenets would prove it to have been. 

But if it is not to be socialism complete, it may be partial 
socialism — the socialism that causes and will cause the 
nation to build transcontinental canals as regulators of the 
trustified railroad and general transportation business of the 
country. Changes and reforms, very thorough and very 
drastic, must soon be wrought in the present wasteful indus- 
trial system, which involves decennial panics, quinquennial 
overproduction and annual labor strikes. 

Competition is suffering from a desperate disease. It needs 
a desperate remedy. Trust magnates and their very limited 
number of beneficiaries would alone find desperate the true 
remedy for the industrial crisis that is now upon the people 
of all the world’s most enlightened nations. 

For the cure of all industrial ills there is, or should be 
an adequate remedy. An industrial system founded upon 
justice should not properly be subject to decay or death, 
much less to periodic panics. It practically should be 
immortal. 

How to bring about a lasting industrial system that would 
preserve all that is best in the competitive system, now 
almost undone by the manipulating trusts, has been the riddle 
of legislation in recent years. Nothing but failure has met 
all efforts of the past. But it must not be failure always, 
unless Caucasian civilization is to be overthrown. 

Whatever agency, plan, or discovery would put an effective 
check upon industrial rapacity and greed may be trusted to 
make continued oppression of the wage-earning masses im- 


444 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


possible. I believe that I have hit upon such a plan, and it 
is to explain its perfect workings as a cure or corrective 
force for all the oppressions of wage-earners in our day that 
I am here before you this afternoon. It 'is a simple remedy 
at that, and I shall need but to expound it briefly for you 
to be able to see its force. Here it is: 

Give public opinion a fair and open chance to regulate, if 
not absolutely to fix, the rates of wages to be paid by em- 
ployers to the toilers in every business concerned with the 
production and distribution of all necessary and useful com- 
modities of life. 

But how can ^his right to fix the just rate of wages in 
all lines of trade and industry be given to or acquired by 
public opinion? Is it possible and practical to secure for 
the citizen all the data, the facts and figures, on which pub- 
lic opinion could base a just and fair verdict, or decree, as 
to the proper amount of wages to be paid as a minimum 
scale in all lines of wage-earners’ toil? 

Yes, I should say, it is a very possible, very practical thing 
to do. And the way to do it is to procure — or, if necessary, 
compel — the publication of payrolls of all kinds,— whether 
weekly, monthly, yearly or daily. Enact a law compelling 
all employers to keep in accessible places in their stores or 
business houses a printed list or volume setting forth the 
names, ages, length of experience and wages of every em- 
ploye of that particular firm or concern. Let it be the law 
that all these payrolls shall be sworn to as correct and let 
the penalty of imprisonment, without the option of a fine, 
attach to the offense of falsification or perjury in reference 
to the payrolls. 

Should a measure still more drastic be necessary all the 
big and little stores and factories might be required by law 
to maintain in every department large signboards or tablets 
giving the exact amount of the wages paid to each employe 
of the concern, the said signboards to be so placed that all 
customers and the public may, without difficulty, be able 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


445 


to read and ascertain for themselves the sworn rate of wages 
paid to each hired person in business places of every city, 
town and village of the nation. Or these wage-announcing 
signs might be placed conspicuously outside the doors of 
large business houses such as the big stores, or in the vesti- 
bules of smaller places; so that the public or prospective 
customers may be able to ascertain in each case, and before 
they enter, what sort of firm it is that seeks public patronage 
in trade or commerce. 

Accessibility to information as to payrolls would give 
everybody an opportunity to know the exact amount of wages 
paid in every occupation of life. That is precisely what is 
needed — what has for half a century been needed in all large 
cities and towns. It is so easy for an employer in any large 
city to oppress his employes by withholding from them their 
fair share of the profits from a successful business. It should 
be unlawful for an employer to speculate on the surplus 
value of labor, just as it is unlawful to speculate in most 
other classes of “futures.” If a future value over and above 
a fair and legal rate of interest — the fair return on the in- 
vestment — is realized on labor’s product, it is essentially un- 
just to allow the employers to pocket all the returns from 
such future values and keep the wage-earner out of his just 
share, making his toil and his life the means of unjust and 
grinding speculation for the fabulous enrichment of the em- 
ploying speculator. 

With the sworn payrolls accessible to the public the crying 
abuse of underpaid labor would quickly disappear. The 
public would fail to patronize establishments in which starva- ' 
tion wages were paid. It would not be necessary to fix all 
wages by law. Public opinion would do the fixing. And 
the said fixing of wages by public sentiment would be at an 
approximately fair and just rate of pay. No agency in the 
world is so powerful as the consensus of opinion in a com- 
munity. This is well shown in small communities where 
public opinion has room to work in favor of true justice 


446 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


and highest civilization. Sins of oppression for which 
ostracism would be incurred in smaller communities are 
committed daily with impunity in all large cities. Hence we 
have the slums and the Ghettos in Chicago, New York, Lon- 
don and other large cities. Force the sworn publication of 
all payrolls in country, state and nation, and soon the slums 
and sweatshops of all the cities will vanish like the indus- 
trial nightmares that they are. 

As a free and unsubsidized press would be well nigh indis- 
pensable as an agency for making public and disseminating 
information as to payrolls, the business of advertising in 
newspapers should have its abuses corrected under the regu- 
lation and control of law. It might even be wise for the! 
people to adopt a law compelling every newspaper to publish 
at intervals the detailed figures of mercantile and industrial 
payrolls, not expecting its own. 

A newspaper that gets $5,000,000 a year in pay for its ad- 
vertising — as many “great dailies’’ do — cannot be expected 
to advocate any interests save those of the commercial or 
employing classes. As the newspaper system is operated 
at the present time the press is as truly hired in the inter- 
ests of the rich as if the subsidies were handed over directly 
and without pretense of consideration to the newspaper pub- 
lishers instead of the form of the so-called “dollar-a-line” 
advertisements farmed out among the hungry journalistic 
tribe. The trustified press has thus become a scourage of 
the people. It is a base and' selfish agency for public and 
private plunder — an institution aiding not the cause of jus- 
tice but injustice — a parasite thriving upon the follies of the 
people and the cash payments of the large advertisers. Fain 
would I not say it, but truth compels me to admit that the 
trust press and the mercantile advertisers are simply two 
jackals devouring, and often fighting for, the pickings from 
the moribund carcass of the competitive system of trade 
and wages. 

Think you it is a mere accident that the pay of public 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 447 

officials is better than the pay for mercantile work similar 
to theirs? But it is no mere accident. It is because public 
opinion, voiced by the legislators, fixes a respectable standard 
of pay for public officials. A somewhat similar exercise of 
public opinion is needed in fixing the pay of all the wage- 
earners in the industrial and mercantile life of the times. 
It would be a difficult, if not an impossible, task for 'the state 
to fix all wages. Bui it is really not difficult for the state 
to enforce the publication of all payrolls. To prove this point 
The Still Small Voice will show the state the way. We will 
begin tomorrow the publication of the payrolls of the big 
stores and other business houses in the city, and no stop 
or halt will be made until all are published — all of them, 
every one, so that the public may judge where and by whom 
the living wages are not being paid. 

With publication laws in full force public opinion will have 
an adequate weapon by means of which to enforce just and 
fair profit-sharing between employers and their employes. In 
that way the accumulation of vast fortunes amassed by 
underpaid labor for a few unjustly favored individuals or 
families would be rendered impossible in the coming time. 
If public opinion is not given a chance to compel some such 
measure of profit-sharing as the public scrutiny of payrolls 
would lead to, then it is probable that the extremists will 
gain control in politics and be able to put to the test their 
theories of the socialistic state or compel the fixing of all 
wages by law of the state and nation instead of by means of 
the ancient law of Supply and Demand — the cumbersome so- 
called natural law that seems to be on the point of breaking 
down of its own weight plus the weight of the criminal trusts 
and monopolies. 

Publication of payrolls I regard as the only feasible and 
just method of counteracting the extremist movement for the 
socialist state. 

But there are certain auxiliary reforms that should be put 
in force at the same time with the suggested payroll — pub- 


448 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


lication law, if the latter measure is to be successful. Most 
important of these auxiliary reforms should be the strict 
and strenuous enforcement of all the statutes of fraud against 
the extortionate and oppressive rich as well as all other 
offenders. 

Next in importance should be a radical reform of the 
voting systems at all political elections. It should not be 
in the power of any one man or set of men to name at a 
caucus or convention the political candidate that I or any 
of you, my fellow-countrymen, should be compelled to vote 
for— or feel compelled to vote for — unless prepared to suffer 
the penalty of not voting at all, or of “throwing away” our 
votes on a hopeless candidate. In advance of the actual 
count of votes cast at the polls no set of political bosses — 
whether saloonmen or a better element — no political machine, 
caucus or convention, should be allowed to exercise the 
power — at a meeting in the rear room of some saloon or else- 
where — of naming a political candidate for me or you to vote 
for. 

Should it, however, continue to be permissible for the polit- 
ical machines to nominate candidates at caucuses and con- 
ventions, the lint ought to be drawn against them and in 
favor of individual liberty the moment they attempt to in- 
vade the voting booth. That is to say, they should not 
be allowed to print upon the ballots the names of their 
nominees, or any set of names as their tickets or ticket. No 
name or names of any candidate should be permitted to 
appear in print or otherwise upon the ballot. This is a civil- 
ized age. Practically no voters are illiterate. So make the 
legal way of voting a written, not a printed or cross-marked, 
ballot. Let every voter write upon the face of the ballot the 
name or names of the candidate or candidates he wishes to 
vote for. And if there are illiterates who are qualified, and 
want to exercise the elective franchise, let their votes con- 
tinue to be sworn in by the law officers, even as the present 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


449 


vogue or legal custom has it. More time than under the 
present system would be required to count the written bal- 
lots. But the country would be safe in any event and no 
harm would come if election results are not known for 
weeks after voting day. 

Another important reform should be that the state acquire 
and hold forever many large tracts of lands as sites for 
emergency factories to compete in output with all industrial 
trusts or monopolies ; or to use as farms on which the 
armies of the unemployed may be given opportunity to sup- 
port themselves by tillage of the soil. In the competition 
from this reserve of land and of factories would be found 
the most effective of all possible checks upon the predatory 
and oppressive operations of the criminal trusts, the indus- 
trial monopolies. With these factories and lands of its 
own the state, when the pinch of the periodically recurring 
panics came, would be able to give employment to the un- 
employed of the trustified industries which overproduction 
or inflation is wont to paralyze once in every ten or a dozen 
years. State competition, ready to be put in operation on 
short notice and capable of vast expansion in an emergency, 
would beyond question prove to be a saving remedy for all 
the people at the times when financial and industrial panics 
are threatening the business horizon. 

What I have said about state competition in the industries 
holds good in reference to newspaper ownership, as well as 
all other large enterprises. The state should be ready 
at any time to own and operate several newspapers as 
a check upon those privately owned. Moreover, it should be 
made unlawful for newspaper proprietors and publishers to 
engage actively in any other business than that of journal- 
istic publication. The doing of strict justice in the work of 
reporting and commenting on the public affairs of city, state 
and nation is hardly compatible with diversity of interest in 
business matters on the part of a newspaper publisher. He 
should not have too many commercial axes to grind in his 


450 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


business of purveying supposedly uncolored and unbaiscd 
news to the public. 

Another much needed reform is the imposing of a ta^Q 
on all large incomes. Inheritances are taxed in this country. 
If it is right to tax inheritances it should be right to tax 
incomes, as it must be admitted in the last analysis that an, 
inheritance represents an income for the heir. 

Public knowledge of payrolls would render it unnecessary 
for labor unions to oppose the principle of the so-called 
open shop — the term which employers use in the sense 
that the workshops should be open alike to union and 
non-union labor. But in the truest sense it is the labor 
union that everywhere has been 'struggling to keep things 
open — the most important thing in the world to keep open 
being the secrets of the payrolls. It has been the habit of 
practically all employers to keep their payrolls secret, not 
open. But when the labor union appeared upon the scene, 
with its successful demand for a minimum wage scale, the 
maintenance of further secrecy as to payrolls was made im- 
possible so far as concerned the individual labor-union mem- 
bers of each particular skilled trade. Thus the truest 
friends of the open-shop were the labor unions. They broke 
down and threw open the secrets hidden in pauperizing pay- 
rolls. Nothing that could happen in the business world 
would so materially advance the cause of highest justice and 
truest humanity as the adoption of laws that would enforce 
the publication of all the payroll secrets of the time. With 
such a reform the open shop — even in the narrow and selfish 
sense in which that term is used by the combined employers’ 
associations of the nation — would be the best possible system. 
Public sentiment with its facilities for learning the rate of 
wages paid in all occupations would inevitably influence the 
pay of non-union employes and force and keep the wage 
standard at a just and fairly adequate figure. Employes' 
having membership in labor unions would have the benefit 
both of their organization and public sentiment. Thus the 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 45 I 

general standard of wages and of living would be kept rea- 
sonably high, and at a figure approximating justice. There 
would be few strikes and labor riots, or violent industrial 
troubles. Calm public opinion, which is always healthy and 
sound in civilized nations, would be a check alike upon the 
injustice or harshness of employers or employes. Fear of 
competition from the output of state factories or stores of 
the semi-socialist kind would also be a wholesome check 
upon extortionate employers. Scales of prices for labor and 
labor’s products could more easily be kept at a figure reason- 
ably high. With the disappearance of pauper wages, the 
paupers themselves and all the squalid misery of pauperism 
would also disappear. It would be the era when all could 
live and let live. Who can doubt that the world would then 
be better— that everything w’ould be benefited all around. 

By the adoption of some such reforms as the foregoing, 
society — the free . society that embodies the commanding 
power of civilization — can save itself from the reactionary 
and retrogressive step of having to test the untried experi- 
ment of the socialist state. In all the standard socialist writ- 
ings, from Plato and Socrates and More, Proudhon and 
Owen, to Marx and Engels, the dictum is laid down that 
true socialism does not seek the forcible abolition of the state. 
What it avowedly seeks is the abolition of the competitive 
system in trade and industry— in the production and dis- 
tribution of life’s necessary commodities. Instead of the 
competitive system and the organized state government the 
socialists would inaugurate what they call by the euphemistic 
name of the co-operative commonwealth. But for the actual 
working of this commonwealth of theirs, which yet remains 
more Utopian than practical or scientific, they confess that 
they would have to use an organization of the people. They 
call this needed organization the administrative or directing 
force of the co-operative commonwealth. That organization 
of theirs is then simply a form of government— a state or 
nation. So it seems illogical in the socialists to seek the 


452 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


overthrow of the popular present governmental system in 
order to install in its stead another institution or govern- 
ment of a kind that might be in no way more representative 
or popular, and perhaps would prove much more liable to 
become a tyranny or despotism of the dictators to be known 
as “directors of the administrative details of production and 
distribution.” Some socialists have styled these directors 
“the administrative heads of the statistical bureaus, or bu- 
reaus of information,” which under the socialist co-operative 
commonwealth would replace the government as at present 
administered. But it is doubtful if people would be found 
good enough for such a system. Elimination of industrial 
competition, as planned by the socialists, would hardly be 
likely to make industrial saints of the population of this or 
any other nation of the world. “Resist not evil” is a social- 
ist doctrine that would lead inevitably to complete anarchy. 
Perhaps it is on the principle “Resist not evil” that some 
socialists have been able to figure it out that the big stores 
controlling the retail dry-goods business are simply a step 
in the direction of socialism. How socialism can thus be 
shown to be beneficent surpasses the understanding, unless 
the pitiable abyss of pauper wages paid in the aforesaid big 
stores is to be regarded as a socialistic development of benefit 
to mankind. But even the socialists will recoil at this. They 
are hardly to be supposed ready to admit that evil is neces- 
sary in order that good may come. It ought to be possible, and 
it seems entirely just and right, to put in operation, by gov- 
ernment agencies and popular laws, some measures that would 
remedy the evil of pauper wages in sweatshops, factories and 
stores without waiting for labor to reach the degraded level 
through and by which the socialist regime is to be estab- 
lished upon the earth. The logical thing for the so-called 
socialists to do would be to set to work for the reformation 
and purification of the existing governmental system, instead 
of seeking its overthrow. For the fact remains, despite all 
befogment of industrial problems, that competition is society’s 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 4^3 

true socialism, and the death of competition would meean 
also the death of progress. 

With the utterance of this sentiment by the speaker 
a great commotion arose among the members of the 
coterie of extremists who, despite all vigilance of the 
police and Dr. Barrett, had gained access to the hall. 
Deep mutterings, sinister threats and much turbulence 
ensued. Then John Lodge’s friends and admirers, 
who were legion as compared with the malcontents, 
arose en masse and jumping on chairs and window 
sills vociferously cheered “the next president” and his 
popular and much admired programme of “payroll 
publication.” 

In the acclaim for John and his great project for 
industrial reform, the popular devotion to his person 
and the general belief in his honesty of purpose and 
his ability to save the social order were amply mani- 
fested. If the disturbers had been less determined 
they would have been forced to subside. True, their 
voices were utterly drowned out and overwhelmed in 
the immense volume of applause and commendation 
for John Lodge. But they seemed resolved not to be 
suppressed by numbers. They began to gesticulate 
wildly. It appeared to be their purpose, plot or plan 
to start a riot, in the hope no doubt of reaching John 
with a deadly weapon during the enforced melee. 

But just then there was a temporary lull in the 
tempest. The abatement of the rioting was brought 
about by John Lodge, who was again speaking and 


/ 


454 the sword of the advertiser. 

whose silvery voice was heard high and clear above 
the din as he said : 

i learned some days ago that my life is sought by 
a small cabal of political maniacs who regard me as 
a stumbling-block in the pathway to the phantom goal 
of no-government. Well, I want to say to those mis- 
guided men or their sympathizers, if any of them hap- 
pens to be present, that I have no fear of death and 
that I am ready any time to die. But I want also to 
say in all solemnity to those men that the day is for- 
ever passed when true civilization and the popular 
good can be advanced by violence and bloody deeds. 
Charity and brotherhood, kindness and humanity, . 
benevolence and beneficence, justice and honor and 
honesty — these are the forces that will save the social 
order — these, each and all of them. But above ahd 
beyond the others, and infinitely the greatest of them 
all, is justice, not charity — the justice that will secure 
for the industrial toilers of to-day their fair share 
of the industrial profits from the hands of the great 
plutocrats and trust magnates, and the other oppres- 
sors in all the walks of li — ’’ 

“That^s what we Avant — justice from the rich, 
and you are the richest of them all,” shouted a tall 
blonde man, -who seemed to be the leader of the 
disturbers and now was fighting fiercely at their 
head. 

“On to the platform!” continued this same ring- 
leader, in a hoarse cry to his followers. 

It was his last battle cry in this hall that day. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 455 

His throat is now held in the strangling, chok- 
ing grip of Dr. Barrett, who at the head of a vig- 
ilant flying squadron of citizens, specially organ- 
ized by the physician for an emergency of this kind, 
descended in a wedge formation upon the little 
gang of disturbers and rendered invaluable aid to 
the police. Almost in the twinkling of an eye prac- 
tically the whole gang of malcontents was ejected 
from the hall, though not before John Lodge him- 
self had left the platform and started to the aid of 
his friend, the physician, beside whom and in whose 
defense he now felt it to be his place to struggle or 
to die. 


456 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


I 


CHAPTER LXL 

Before John Lodge had time to reach his friend’s 
side the hoarse clang of firebells arose from the 
street in front of the great hall’s windows. 

Then the chairman said : 

‘‘Fire has broken out in the New Savoy theatre, 
and hundreds of lives of women and children at the 
matinee are threatened !” 

Such was the startling announcement from the 
platform. His position on the stage had given the 
chairman an opportunity to observe the scene of the 
gathering fire-fighters’ operations and correctly to 
estimate the magnitude of the catastrophe threat- 
ening the great playhouse and its audience of in- 
nocents. 

When the presiding citizen’s ominous words fell 
upon the ears of the attendants at this peace-meet- 
ing, which seemed to be on the verge of degenerat- 
ing into an affair by no means peaceable, consterna- 
tion reigned supreme. Awe and horror seized the 
vast throng. A hush fell upon all. Even the com- 
motion of the disturbers contending with the police. 
Dr. Barrett and his athletes, was stilled. 

Presently the clang of the fire gongs, this time 
nearer and louder than before, was heard again 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


457 


from the streets. Because of the din caused 
by the rioters many persons in the audience had 
failed to hear anything that the chairman had said 
except the one word “fire.” They assumed that the 
blaze was in the hall itself, or in a building next 
door. For a moment the crowds were restless ; then 
a rush was made for the doors and exits. A panic 
and stampede, with certain danger to life and limb, 
seemed imminent. 

Just then a cool-headed clergyman, who was one 
of the audience and had been seated in the center 
of the hall, jumped upon a chair and in a high- 
pitched voice attempted to reassure the excited 
crowds and warn them of the dangers of a panic or 
too hasty a rush from the hall. His words of ap- 
peal had no effect. Then, in a final effort to allay 
the excitement, he began to sing a religious hymn, 
his hope and purpose being to “drown out” with 
sacred song the noise caused by the disturbers with- 
in the hall and by the fire gongs outside. 

“Let us praise God in song,” he shouted. 

Then he quickly added : 

“Arise and sing the doxology !” 

“Doxolomogy h — 11 ; dis am no time for doxol- 
omogy ; Fse gwyne to git outa heah,” said a gray- 
haired negro who by this time could be seen climb- 
ing over the backs of seats and headed for a nearby 
.window, through which he jumped, shattering the 
glass and carrying the sash with him. 

This episode augmented the excitement in the 


458 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

hall, as the more self-possessed among the crowds 
realized that the negro, in his frenzy, had not taken 
into account the great height of his wild leap. They 
felt that he must have been badly injured, if not in- 
stantly killed.' 

The confusion and noise were now so great that 
the reign of pandemonium seemed to have arrived. 
But at this moment the silvery voice of John Lodge 
was heard above the din. He was summoning Dr. 
Barrett and Rudolph Cobb to follow him. And 
what John said was this : 

“If the lives of women and children are threat- 
ened, as beyond question they are likely to be in 
this theatre fire, let us proceed at once to the work 
of rescuing or aiding them. Or at least we must 
offer to the brave firemen whatever assistance may 
be possible. Come, doctor ! Come, professor ! Let 
us aid in the rescue work, if aid we can.^’ 

With imperious sweep of gestures John Lodge, 
who had it in him to rise to great heights of bravery 
and fine leadership of men, demanded and obtained 
from the surging crowds a clear passage and egress 
through the nearest exit leading into the street. He 
was followed closely by Dr. Barrett and Professor 
Cobb, though the physician did not release his grip 
upon the disturbing agitator’s throat until that 
worthy had been ejected through the very same 
doorway that now afforded egress to John Lodge, 
and the rescue party which he was leading. 

The arrival of John in the street was simultan- 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


459 


ecus with the crest wave of horrifying rumors as to 
the immense number of lives imperiled in the fire 
panic at the theatre one-half a block away. With a 
few persons of his acquaintance whom he met on the 
sidewalk John Lodge spoke briefly, inquiring anx- 
iously as to the supposed extent of the disaster. He 
was told that the vanguard of the city’s brigade of 
firefighters had only just arrived upon the scene; 
that nobody yet knew what was the extent of the 
disaster, but that authetic reports said a great panic 
was in progress among the audience of 2,000 women 
and children and that beyond question numerous 
lives were being crushed out at that very moment 
in a wild stampede amid smoke and fumes and 
flames. 

But here the Lodge party now are at the very 
doors of the burning theatre, whose interior, strange 
to say, is as dark as if canopied by a thunder cloud. 

In the excitement and the onrush to the scene of the 
fire John Lodge became separated from Dr. Barrett 
and Professor Cobb, who near one of the theatre’s 
doors, at the main entrance in Randolph Street, met 
Leandra Beverly and her aunt. Miss Sophonisba. 
The two ladies had been at the matinee in the 
doomed theatre, but luckily were occupants of a 
box near the main door. It had not been difficult 
for them to effect their escape. Their position had 
enabled them to observe the first outburst of flames 
near the border of the stage curtain, and they were 
among the very first in the audience to realize the 




460 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

danger. It was not known to Dr. Barrett that they 
had gone to this matinee, or to any other place of 
amusement that afternoon. Indeed they left the 
Beverly mansion to take a drive in the boulevards, 
and it was only after they had made the start from 
home that they formed the project to view the much- 
talked“Of spectacle at the New Savoy. They did not 
realize for some time after reaching the street — nor 
did Dr. Barrett yet fully realize — what a narrow escape 
they had, and that fate favored the women of the 
Beverly family that day when they decided to pur- 
chase the box seats instead of the orchestra or balcony 
chairs that also had been offered to them at the ticket 
office. 

Only a very few persons were now emerging from 
the cavernous jaws of this burning structure above 
whose portals was the ominous sign of the Indian- 
head in chiseled stone. Nearly all were out who could 
escape. But, nay not all — there was an ill-fated 600. 

No hesitancy as to his course, no feeling of terror, 
fear or alarm for himself, had now any weight with 
John Lodge, or found a place for one moment in his 
breast. With alacrity he drew from his vest pocket a 
fire badge of the legally authorized kind — the kind 
that is recognized as the passport guaranteeing at all 
times uninterrupted passage for newspaper men and 
firemen through encircling cordons of police and high- 
est civic officials. He attached this fire badge conspic- 
ulously to the lapel of his coat. It was in truth a 
passport for him to the theatre door. 

Beyond the door it also took him. 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 46 1 

• Once inside, he saw at a glance that havoc of an 
awful kind was at that moment befalling precious 
lives. 

In the magnificent foyer of this beautiful but ill- 
starred home of the drama, John Lodge now met a 
fire marshal with whom he had a close personal 
acquaintance. 

“Mr. Marshall,” he said in a voice that was im- 
pressive, though soft and tremulous, “I have come to 
offer aid in the work of your brave firemen, as it is 
my wish to assist in saving all the lives possible from 
this dreadful, fiery furnace of death and disaster.” 

Quickly the fire marshal answered : 

“Thank you for your generous and brave offer, Mr. 
Lodge. It is accepted. We have need for one hundred 
like you. You have the freedom of the house. Go 
anywhere you wish. But it is likely you could save 
most lives in one of the balconies, though I fear you 
would risk your own life in trying to climb the stair- 
way. Aha, look out, Mr. Lodge! Look out, or you 
will be struck ! That girl is about to jump or fall from 
the balustrade near the doorway of the top balcony. 
Ah, she is indeed letting go her hold. Look out, 
look—” 

John looked up, not “out.” He saw a feminine 
form falling as if from the roof tree some fifty feet 
above his head. He realized that the girl’s body 
would strike him if he stood his ground. But he had 
no thought for his own safety. He feared only for 
her. 


462 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

Lightly balancing himself on tiptoe he poised in 
athletic attitude and waited. It was only for an in- 
stant. 

When the falling girl had descended about two- 
thirds of the precipitous height John Lodge sprang 
several feet into the air, caught the girl in his arms, 
and arrested the momentum of her descent — “broke 
her fall,” as the popular phrase expressed it. He had 
saved her life. 

She sustained not the slightest injury. And the 
fire marshal and his men — themselves performing 
countless deeds of bravery and mercy — stopped mo- 
mentarily in their work, and only the presence of 
death restrained them from uttering an impulsive, 
spontaneous cheer for John Lodge’s remarkable feat 
at life-saving — a cheer that would have been excus- 
able even in the midst of such heart-rending scenes of 
woe and horror. 

A fireman now handed John Lodge a piece of mois- 
tened sponge, and the young publisher, realizing the 
purpose of the gift, pressed the fungus momentarily 
to his. lips and nostrils as a protection against suffoca- 
tion from smoke and gas fumes. He then stepped to 
the nearest open doorway commanding a view of the 
pit and the forward sections of the balconies. 

What he saw was most horrifying — caused his eyes 
to swim with moisture, his blood to boil with indigna- 
tion. Doors of “exits” were locked and barred and 
scores of helpless, struggling human beings, entrapped 
by the flames and overcome by the smoke and heat, 
were falling dead in their tracks upon the floors of 


THE SWOKL) OF THE ADVERTISER. 463 

the aisles and passageways. And where the exit signs 
hung flaringly on the walls, like so many decoys for 
game to be ensnared by — it was there that the heaps 
of the dead and dying were the largest, the agonies 
and horrors the most numerous. 

Rescuers, well-meaning and brave and heroic, stood 
still as if paralyzed, not knowing which hopeless vic- 
time to help first, or where to turn in giving aid and 
succor. 

But there was no halt in the progress of John Lodge 
to any and every spot where the spirit of mercy and 
helpfulness now led him on. He was attracted here by 
a faint moan or stifled cry. And there, in another 
direction, it was a piteous writhing, shriveled, unrecog- 
nizable mass of human forms, with singed or burning 
hair and garments, that attracted him. 

He performed and was still performing prodigious 
feats of rescue work. He wrought ceaselessly amid 
difficulties and horrors and dangers that would have 
appalled and paralyzed one less stout of heart, less 
tender of soul, less heroic of mold. 

Encircling gloom and all-pervasive smoke and 
silence held the whole interior of the building in a 
ghastly stillness, save where the fitful glow and hissing 
swirl of intermittent flames were seen. Long darts 
and streams of livid fire, like forks of zigzag lightning, 
leaped forth at times from stage and scenario, illumi- 
nating the pit and oalconies with a lurid, sickly corrus- 
cation. 

Furies of the regions of Pluto and Erebus were 
symbolized in these spitfire tongues of flame. From 


464 the sword of the advertiser. 

stage to highest balcony seat the whirlwind of fire and 
smoke and gas fumes was swept across the House by 
the mysterious drafts that afterward were proved to 
have originated from open and unporched and un- 
protected stage doors. 

In the pathway of these drafts was the fabric known 
as the drop curtain. It was ablaze. As it sputtered 
and crackled and crumbled beneath the gnawing teeth 
of the fire fiend, the kindled pieces in countless flakes 
and particles — each exhaling the poisonous vapors of 
burning paints and fabrics — were carried forward in 
a luminous swarm through the proscenium arch. It 
was a rainfall of poisoned fire; a scorpion-scourge of 
flame ; a whirlwind of death and dire disaster. 

In its suddenness and fury, like the bursting of Ve- 
suvius or Mount Pelee, the explosive eruption from 
the stage was a volcano. The bed of the volcano's 
crater was the entire vast auditorium of the playhouse. 
The stifling atmosphere of fumes from smoke and 
gases and chemical pigments, rising in sombre bluish- 
green pall to the ceiling, was even more poisonous, 
more deadly to human life, than ever had been the 
showers of hot ashes and sti'eams of molten lava from 
belching, sputtering, exploding fissures in the bosom 
of mother earth. Suffocation was almost instanta- 
neous for all in the broad pathway of smoke and vola- 
tile vapors careening and spiraling in the exploding 
currents of gas and air that swept obliquely from stage 
door on the west to gallery cornice at the open sky- 
lights and the ventilator shafts in the apex of the 
eastern wall. Many in the audience were dying in 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 465 

their seats. They had been overcome where they sat, 
watching and enjoying only a moment before the 
amusing antics of Mr. Ruebeard on the stage. 

Over against the walls, at the points where the de- 
ceptive ''exit” signs had lured their hundreds of vic- 
tims, were being enacted the saddest, most piteous, 
most awful scenes of all. Here, huddled together in 
a twisted heap of arms, legs and bodies, were the 
terror-stricken, stampeding multitudes of pushing, 
howling, screaming, suffocating, leaping, falling, ap- 
pealing, reproaching, fighting men, women and chil- 
dren, all struggling wildly and desperately to escape. 

Some more alert than others to the fatal menace of 
the situation simply climbed upon the backs of persons 
ahead of them in the throngs rushing for the doors. 
In this way were precipitated sundry direful distress- 
ing occurrences that seemed to prove once again the 
grim truth of the unflattering theory that humanity at 
bay is animality undisguised. Persons who had fallen 
prostrate in the first shock of the oncoming suffocation, 
or who perhaps were borne down by the impetuosity 
and momentum of the wild stampede following the 
explosions of the curtain and the chemicals and gases 
from the house paints in the building — these persons 
very often arose with an effort almost superhuman, and 
climbing, crawling upon the heaps of dead and dying 
that blockaded the aisles and passage-ways, made a 
last desperate attempt to attain safety through flight. 
Walking, running, trampling upon the prostrate 
bodies of dead and dying were necessary incidents of 
this procedure, and not all who tried it were able to 


466 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

succeed. But there were a few who seemed to possess 
the deftness and lightness of foot that characterized 
Atlanta’s zephyr paces as that swift-footed goddess 
raced upon the unbending stalks of grain. These few 
escaped. They were children, little girls nearly all. 
And for the saving of those children who can tell how 
many noble-minded men and women, teachers and 
others in that immense audience, had invited their 
own doom by making veritable bridges of their bodies 
in order to afford a chance for the safety of the young 
lives. 

An extraordinary phase of the catastrophe was its 
freedom from, loud explosions. Though the air was 
heavy with the poisonous fumes of gases and vapor- 
ized chemicals, not an explosion was heard outside 
the building. Much screaming there was at the start 
of the panic. But screaming meant speedy suffoca- 
tion, and the final death agonies occurred in silence. 

Women, girls and strong men all alike met instan- 
taneous death. Some among the dead and dying were 
to be seen in prayerful attitudes. Their heads were 
bowed forward on the backs of chairs. Their hands 
were clasped together in devotional form, as if sup- 
pliant to the almighty and mysterious giver of life 
and death. 

Scenes of strange and lofty pathos were to be wit- 
nessed all around amid the doomed and hopeless 
throngs. High upon the lower balcony was a white- 
haired old lady of refined appearance. She was sing- 
ing in a fine mezzo-soprano voice what sounded like a 
religious hymn or anthem. It proved to be the Ave 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 467 

Maria from ‘‘Cavalleria Rusticana/’ She had sung 
only the first few bars when her hair caught fire. She 
removed her bonnet and shook out her snowy locks to 
the flames. Her tresses, which were long and wavy, 
encircled her in fiery coils like the writhing, devouring 
serpents that Medusa’s flowing locks became. She 
stood her ground, still singing, while the hair and 
garments of other women and two young men became 
involved in the infection of the flames. Then she and 
they and hundreds of others fell prone upon the seats 
and flooring, borne down by the fire fiend into the 
swirling maw of death. 

In another portion of this balcony was a tall man 
whose appearance and garb showed his calling to be 
that of a clergyman. He held open in his hands a 
hymnal or prayerbook from which he was reading, in 
weird, monotonous chant, that most solemn and im- 
pressive of all funeral dirges, beginning: 

“Dies irae, dies ilia 
Solvit saeclum cum favilla.” 

He collapsed at the second line in the first stanza. As 
he fell backward, he devotedly raised to his lips the 
manual of sacred song, and it still was resting upon 
them when he was found cold in death. 

It was when the peril to life was at its height that 
John Lodge arrived. 

No hero like Aeneas bearing Anchises on his 
shoulders from the walls of flaming Troy, no brave 
man of the pious and filial mold of Pliny, saving his 
mother from the volcanic menace at Pompeii, could 


468 THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

ever Jiave surpassed the unselfishness or nobility of* 
John Lodge’s deeds on this memorable occasion. 
He risked his own life a hundred times in 
saving or attempting to save the lives of others. He 
bore off a large share of the honors in the rescue 
work. His feats were in many cases perfect marvels 
of heroism and daring, and were acclaimed as such by 
all who saw them and survived the experiences of 
that dreadful day. Moreover, his exploits very often 
were quite thrilling and spectacular, but there was 
none that was performed from any other motive than 
a sense of duty and the obligation to rescue human 
lives and alleviate human suffering. 

In his quest for those to whom his aid might be 
of benefit the wailing cries of little children had had 
an overpowering attraction for him, and in the earlier 
stages of his rescue work he had borne to places of 
safety as many as five or six boys and girls in his arms 
at one time. He had made many trips of this sort 
from “the blind corridor of death” leading southward 
out of the top balcony. In this narrow lane or pas- 
sageway, which at the farthest end had a locked and 
bolted door with the customary mocking sign of 
“exit,” not less than one hundred crushed and suffo- 
cated persons lay maimed and dying, very many of 
them representative of the sweet girlhood type of 
youth and beauty, innocence and loveliness that pre- 
dominated in the audience at this most disastrous of 
all matinees. 

With several firemen and policemen John Lodge 
was about to begin the sad task of lifting and moving 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 469 

the dead bodies of the luckless theater-goers who had 
met their doom in this blind alley of marble and mo- 
saic, when he was startled by the sound of a familiar 
voice in what must have been an effort to sing or chant 
a prayer. The words he heard were the opening lines 
of John Henry Newman’s famous poem, “Lead, 
Kindly Light!” , 

He paused and gazed in the direction whence the 
soft cadences came. His eyes now are riveted upon 
a scene that was being enacted near a doorway of the 
lower balcony. There Dr. Barrett and Professor Cobb 
were attending the dying singer of the beautiful an- 
them. It was a woman that his friends were comfort- 
ing in these her last moments on earth. A venerable 
clergyman, kneeling beside her, was pronouncing 
above her head the absolution cum signo crucis. Her 
voice had disclosed to John Lodge the secret of her 
identity. But soon he had more evidence than her 
voice to go by. She turned her face upward as she 
sang, in manifest ecstacy — 

“And in the morn that angel face will smile, 

Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.” 

And her face — that face, the dying woman’s face — 
was the face of Algona Norwell. 

:|c 5|s * =1' 

Not the least startling of the many inexplicable in- 
cidents of this great fire horror was the mysterious 
disappearance of John Lodge. He was reported miss- 
ing after the date of the great catastrophe. His fate 
remains a problem unsolved. 


470 ' THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 

Numerous theories were advanced in explanation of 
the strange case — theories of death in the fire, of foul 
play at the hands of the cabal that sought his death, 
of abduction and captivity at the hands of members of 
the said cabal, or of still another cabal that was very 
much more powerful in the affairs of statescraft and 
trade and commerce. A theory of voluntary dis- 
appearance until such time as it might suit his pur- 
pose to return was also suggested. Still another the- 
ory was that while he was in truth to be numbered 
among the fire victims, his body was one of the many 
which were insufficiently identified, and that he was 
buried in mistake for someone else. A rumor that he 
had been attracted at the last by the wailing cry of a 
child calling for its mother and had plunged to his 
death in an effort to rescue the little one, murmuring 
as he disappeared, “Suffer the little children to come 
unto me and forbid them not,” could not be verified. 

His friend, Dr. Barrett, decided to continue the 
Lodge newspapers in the interest of the great “com- 
mon people” whom the young philanthropist and pub- 
lisher loved so well. The physician’s grief for his 
friend was unbounded, but he refused to believe that 
John was dead. He grieved over John’s absence, but 
the most exhaustive search failed to unravel the tan- 
gled web of mystery enveloping the strange affair. 
Still the doctor kept the lamp of hope burning ever 
and feeding deeply in his heart ; sometimes flickering 
low and almost quenching, then quickening again and 
rekindling; flaming up, but never flaring. It was the 


THE SWORD OF THE ADVERTISER. 


471 

pathetic vigil of a great and true and noble friend in- 
dulging a forlorn hope for the return some day of 
him whom he called the just one — the just young man. 

By way of keeping prominently alive the memory of 
this noblest of philanthropists the doctor purchased the 
theatre which was the scene of one of the world’s 
greatest holocausts. He remodeled the fine building, 
which the fire left practically intact. It was trans- 
formed into a home and hospital for newsboys and 
waifs of the streets — the enterprising little men who 
ofttimes have been proved to be the best hope of the 
future and to whom the physician knew that John 
Lodge would be most pleased to make such a dona- 
tion. Here were to be annihilated for all time the dis- 
tress and hunger of all Chicago’s waifdom. This home 
or institution was to give them each day their daily 
bread. Sustenance for their little bodies and relief 
from the sorrows of the homeless and motherless life 
were dispensed here day and night to the distressed 
and the sore of foot and heart; to the sick, the blind, 
the lame and the halt in the orphaned juvenile world 
of the great city’s ghettos and purlieus. 

Above the massive portals of this home of the little 
ones Dr. Barrett installed in the place of the feathered 
Indian head a life-like bust of John Lodge. And be- 
neath this bust, with the kindly look and expression 
imparted by the infinitely sweet and ennobling creed 
of the optimist, was emblazoned this legend: 

Rekindle hope all ye who enter here. 

The End. 


JUN 35 1Q04 










' ■■ ir- 




■ f' 



\ L 



I 




I 

1 








